Microsoft Lumia 535 and 535 Dual SIM review: A first of many

The People Hub is great

People Hub is the phonebook that you'll find on the Microsoft Lumia 535, and is one of the more capable such applications we've seen. It supports multiple accounts, including social ones, and has multiple pages like the rest of the WP interface. The first page is your contacts list, the second one is What's New with all of your friends' social updates, then come (chat) Rooms, and Groups.

Contacts

Just like the People app, viewing a single contact also allows you to check this specific person's social updates plus you can view the complete history of exchange with this contact in one place, displayed chronologically. Everything but status updates is listed here: calls, texts (actually threads from the Messaging hub) and emails.

Viewing and editing a single contact

It is very easy to choose which SIM to be used for calling or messaging a specific contact - there is a dedicated SIM1/SIM2 switch to each contact number.

The Me tile is also available, which acts as your collective social hub - you can see all of your social updates here, post statuses across all services, and even a check-in option is available. You can send IMs to your Facebook/Twitter friends from the Me app, too.

The Me tile

Telephony

The phone application on the Microsoft Lumia 535 shows you call history with call duration, thanks to WP 8.1 coming out of the box. There are shortcuts to voice mail, dialer and phonebook. Smart dial is not supported, but you can use Cortana to dial someone in a flash.

One new feature you'll notice in the in-call screen is the Skype button. If you hit it, your call will be automatically transferred into a free Skype video chat. Of course, the other user must have a Skype client installed plus an active internet connection. In any other case, the call will be charged as a Skype Out call.

The call log • the in-call screen with Skype integration

Each SIM card has separate Phone and Messaging apps, so there is very little chance that you accidentally use the wrong SIM. The People Hub offers a comfy switch to each number, so you can easily choose the card you wish to initiate the call from.

Managing the two SIM cards is very easy and is possible via the settings menu. There you can choose which SIM card will be used for data traffic.

We ran our traditional loudspeaker test and the Lumia 535 scored an Average mark. The loudspeaker isn't the loudest around and you should keep in mind that you may miss some calls or notifications in louder environments.

Messaging

The Messaging hub has two new options - a shortcut to go to the contact's full details in People Hub, plus a setting to mute the thread. If you choose Mute, then you'll stop receiving any notifications for incoming messages from this number, though the messages will still be saved in the thread.

Messaging • adding multimedia content is easy

Threads are the building blocks of all non-email messaging. As a sort of conversation view, threads mash together SMS, Facebook and Windows Live messages. That's one thing we love about Windows Phone: the Messaging hub removes the old division between texts, IMs, social messages.

The native email client has very simple interface but it offers everything an email client should feature - support for multiple accounts, threaded view, batch operations, search.

Reading through new emails • only unread emails • email folders • popular email services are supported

Linked Inbox is available too - you can link all of your mail boxes into a single one from the Outlook app's settings.

While retaining the same looks, the virtual keyboard now supports Wordflow - a Swype-like input method allowing you to quickly input words without lifting your finger by swiping through the letters. It is extremely accurate and recently managed to set a new Guinness Record for typing on a virtual keyboard.

The Wordflow keyboard