Nokia Lumia 630/635 review: Bottom up

Benchmarks and performance

Nokia Lumia 630/635 is powered by the widely used Snapdragon 400 chipset. It has four Cortex-A7 processor cores clocked at 1.2GHz, Adreno 305 graphics common for most of the Windows Phone gang and 512MB RAM. Windows Phone 8.1 seems smoother and hopefully the half gig RAM won't be an issue.

We had a few Lumia phones around for our performance test - the Lumia 630 with final WP8.1 version, a Lumia 635 also with Windows 8.1, a Lumia 720, Lumia 1020 and a Lumia 1520. We ran each benchmark on Windows Phone 8 with GDR3 and Nokia Black updates, and then we updated all three older devices (720, 1020, 1520) to the latest Windows Phone 8.1 Developer's Preview.

The first test measures the single-core performance by calculating the Number Pi. Quite expectedly, the Lumia 630 and 635 finished last as the Cortex-A7 is lesser than the Krait 400 and Krait 200 cores.

Pi Benchmark

Lower is better

• Nokia Lumia 1520 (WP8.1)
  146
• Nokia Lumia 1520 (WP8.0)
  146
• Nokia Lumia 1020 (WP8.1)
  215
• Nokia Lumia 1020 (WP8.0)
  215
• Nokia Lumia 720 (WP8.1)
  336
• Nokia Lumia 720 (WP8.0)
  336
• Nokia Lumia 630 (WP8.1)
  699
• Nokia Lumia 635 (WP8.1)
  709

Then we got to the compound test AnTuTu. The Lumia 630/635 fared on par with the Lumia 1020 (2GB RAM) and turned better than the Lumia 720 (512MB RAM), both dual-core Krait-powered phones.

AnTuTu

Higher is better

• Nokia Lumia 1520 (WP8.1)
  25659
• Nokia Lumia 1520 (WP8.0)
  24797
• Nokia Lumia 1020 (WP8.0)
  12064
• Nokia Lumia 630 (WP8.1)
  12035
• Nokia Lumia 635 (WP8.1)
  11969
• Nokia Lumia 1020 (WP8.1)
  11567
• Nokia Lumia 720 (WP8.1)
  7135
• Nokia Lumia 720 (WP8.0)
  7319

Finally, we used the popular cross-platform BaseMark OS II compound benchmark. The Lumia 630/635 did better than its Lumia 720 sibling, and very close to the HD-enabled Lumia 1020.

Basemark OS II

Higher is better

• Nokia Lumia 1520 (WP8.1)
  1116
• Nokia Lumia 1520 (WP8.0)
  1012
• Nokia Lumia 1020 (WP8.1)
  526
• Nokia Lumia 1020 (WP8.0)
  495
• Nokia Lumia 630 (WP8.1)
  465
• Nokia Lumia 635 (WP8.1)
  451
• Nokia Lumia 720 (WP8.1)
  332
• Nokia Lumia 720 (WP8.0)
  319

Windows Phone 8.1 comes with a brand new Internet Explorer 11 web browser that brings lots of new goodies and...you guessed it, performance improvements. We explain all the new stuff a bit further down, but for now we'll just show you how the new IE11 stacks against its previous version in terms of performance.

SunSpider measures the JavaScript rendering performance of the web browser. The Lumia 630/635 fared as good as the WP8.0-running Lumia 720 and falls behind its bigger siblings. Here, it's obvious that the underlying hardware is just as important in these tests as is the software. The latest version of Internet Explorer wasn't enough to help the Lumia 630/635 outperform its siblings.

SunSpider 1.0.2

Lower is better

• Nokia Lumia 1520 (WP8.1)
  514
• Nokia Lumia 1520 (WP8.0)
  543
• Nokia Lumia 1020 (WP8.1)
  912
• Nokia Lumia 1020 (WP8.0)
  965
• Nokia Lumia 720 (WP8.0)
  1430
• Nokia Lumia 630 (WP8.1)
  1448
• Nokia Lumia 635 (WP8.1)
  1459
• Nokia Lumia 720 (WP8.1)
  1756

Finally, we put the phones through the standard HTML5Test and the entire gang showed similar bump in its HTML5 capabilities, courtesy of IE11.

HTML 5 Test

Higher is better

• Nokia Lumia 1520 (WP8.1)
  372
• Nokia Lumia 635 (WP8.1)
  372
• Nokia Lumia 1020 (WP8.1)
  368
• Nokia Lumia 720 (WP8.1)
  368
• Nokia Lumia 630 (WP8.1)
  368
• Nokia Lumia 1520 (WP8.0)
  328
• Nokia Lumia 1020 (WP8.0)
  328
• Nokia Lumia 720 (WP8.0)
  328

So overall, the Lumia 630/635 isn't a performance beast but it does OK when it comes to raw power. Its Windows Phone 8.1 runs smooth and without hiccups, as do the popular mobile arcade games.