A vibrant, affordable 4G LTE Nokia Lumia phone

The Nokia Lumia 630 earned itself some stars thanks to its affordable price and vibrant, fun interchangeable plastic back cases. It’s 3G only however, which lost it a fair few points. Its twin brother, the Lumia 635 is identical in every respect to the 630, but it comes with 4G LTE on board.

LTE radio aside, the phone is still 4.5 inches, has an 854×480-pixel resolution display, a 1.2GHz quad-core processor, a 5-megapixel camera and runs the latest Windows Phone 8.1 software.

The Lumia 635 is on sale now in the UK for £139 ($238/AU$253), directly from Nokia. That’s only £10 more than its 3G-only sibling — a remarkably small amount extra to pay — I’m not sure why anybody would go for the 3G model when 4G will cost you barely any extra.

Given that both phones are functionally identical, I’ve done a shorter version of my usual review here — for the full analysis on display quality, using the Windows software and camera performance, head over to the more comprehensive Lumia 630 review.

Design and display

Like all of Nokia’s Lumia phones, the 635 has a plastic, colourful body. The colour comes from the back panels, which curve around the body to meet the display, rather like the iPhone 5C. As well as bright green, you can get the 635 in luminous yellow, orange or black if you’re boring. The covers are removable, allowing you to swap them out when you fancy a change or to just replace a knackered old case.

The plastic is sturdy and easily capable of taking a few knocks and bumps, while the toughened Gorilla Glass 3 will prevent the glass front from getting too many scratches from keys in your pocket. It has 8GB of storage as standard, but there’s a microSD card slot for you to keep your music, photos and videos on.

The 4.5-inch screen has an 854×480-pixel resolution, which is less than you’d find on the Moto G. Text and images aren’t quite as sharp, but it’s perfectly adequate for tweeting and Facebook stalking. It’s quite bright too and has decent colours. If you want to get the most from your Netflix shows, consider opting for a higher resolution display.

Windows Phone 8 software