As with the Lumia 830, we used Asphalt 8: Airborne as an informal games metric, and the performance was a bit stuttery, but not unplayable. Benchmarks were nearly identical, too: SunSpider 1.0.2 (1.24 s), Antutu 0.8 beta (11,123) and WPbench (237.72) were all about half the performance of the Lumia Icon, with its 2.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 chip. In fact, the Lumia 640’s display, internal processor (a 1.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 400), and memory (1GB RAM) are identical to last fall’s Lumia 830. The only real annoyance I have with low-res Windows Phones is that webpages displayed via Internet Explorer can require you to turn on Reading Mode before the font is large enough to read comfortably. Don’t write it off just yet, though: Apps render just fine. The phone’s 1280×720, 5-inch IPS display fits well in the hand, but can’t hold a candle to the exquisitely detailed displays that iOS and Android phones tout. The Lumia 640 is housed in a slick plastic chassis that can feel too slippery at times.
