Review: Nokia Lumia 635 for T-Mobile
Screen
The Lumia 635 has a 4.5-inch 854 x 480 screen. It uses the Nokia's ClearBlack LCD technology and manages to look good despite the relative lack of pixels. I found the screen to be bright in all but the sunniest environments. The lower resolution is helped a lot by the design of Windows Phone 8.1, which uses a lot of straight-edged UI elements. Even so, pixels are readily visible to the naked eye. There's a little bit of brightness loss when the phone is tilted side-to-side, but colors still look good. It's a passable screen for this price tier.
Signal
The 635 performed exceptionally well on T-Mobile's LTE 4G network. In areas where T-Mobile offered LTE, the 635 latched on tight. The 635 was able to connect all calls on the first dial, and never dropped or missed calls. Call set-up times were generally short. Data speeds were consistently good when LTE was available. I noticed some slight slow-downs in data when LTE network coverage was at its weakest, but it was never anything to complain about.
Sound
Call quality was quite good. Voices came through the earpiece clearly. Voices sounded natural and warm. You'll be able to hear calls most anywhere thanks to the potent volume. I rarely found the need to set the volume any higher than 60%. Setting it up all the way easily overpowers nearby noise. The speakerphone is also incredibly loud. Call quality suffers a little bit thanks to some distortion, but the speakerphone is very useful. Callers said I sounded good to them. Ringers and alert tones come screaming through when set all the way up. You can keep them set about halfway most of the time. The vibrate alert was plenty strong.
Battery
The smaller, low-res screen and mid-grade processor mean the Lumia 635 provides solid battery life. The 1,830 mAh battery is rather small when compared to many of today's phones, but it provides more than enough juice to get most users from breakfast to bedtime. The phone consistently lasted an entire day and never showed any signs of weakness. You should be good to go with the 635.
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