L640 DS available on Expansys USA

[Guytronic]

Microsoft Lumia 640 Dual SIM RM-1113 (Unlocked LTE, 8GB, Black) #AP_LUMIA640_BLK - Expansys USA

Unlocked dual SIM RM-1113 $209.99 in black!

 

[hotphil]

Cool. They're selling the same SKU in most of their sites - would be interesting to know if they're just gonna ship a load from somewhere or if they're US-intended models. At least folks might be able to get their hands on them!

 

[Davide Carozza]

Woah, that seems to support a lot of different frequencies, but not 1700. Am I right that that would be a problem for T-Mobile 3G coverage? Then again, it does Band 4 and 12, so I would have 4G LTE coverage, right?

 

[MassDeduction]

Woah, that seems to support a lot of different frequencies, but not 1700. Am I right that that would be a problem for T-Mobile 3G coverage? Then again, it does Band 4 and 12, so I would have 4G LTE coverage, right?

Microsoft's website says that variant does support AWS (1700/2100) over both 3G and LTE. I think the Expansys listing is incorrect. I am so confident that I just bought one based on that belief.

 

[Davide Carozza]

Thanks again MassDeduction. I saw that you (briefly?) had the Blu Win HD LTE and now ordered the Lumia 640. I am completely on the fence between the two so once you've handled both I would appreciate a recommendation!

 

[MassDeduction]

Thanks again MassDeduction. I saw that you (briefly?) had the Blu Win HD LTE and now ordered the Lumia 640. I am completely on the fence between the two so once you've handled both I would appreciate a recommendation!

I look forward to giving you my impressions!

 

[cashkennedy]

Instead of ordering the lumia 640 lte dual sim from expansys, i found one on ebay. Still the same RM-1113. I received the phone and it was produced for the hong kong / chinese market from the best i can tell. It came with a bunch of Chinese keyboards installed, and booted into a form of Chinese. Luckily right when you turn on the phone fresh from the factory the option in center of screen is to select what language and keyboard you want so i just scrolled up to English. The phone purchase also came with a wall plug adapter that said HK on it (from the ebay seller not msft).

The box was tiny compared to what the lumia 635 from tmobile came in. It also clearly stated the same LTE bands on the box. I would be incredibly surprised if this was a fake phone or anything like that, especially since glance, and double tap to wake work.

Unfortunately so far, i have only got the phone to display 4G for t-mobile with a sim that i had been using on LTE minutes before in a lumia 925 and a blu win hd lte. I also tried a verizon lte sim, not expecting much (since verizon is cdma network), but doesnt seem to be working, i do get verizon to show up on the network selection page, but it says the sim connection isnt authenticated when i try to connect.

Hopefully some other people have received theirs who ordered from expansys and can say if it worked on lte for them.

The glossy back on the phone is lame, other then that this phone is pretty awesome as mentioned in all the other reviews.

 

[cashkennedy]

I tend to get h+ showing up on the screen when in "3g" and while on 4g like a few feet from the tmobile tower i was getting 9 Mb/s upload which should be beyond the wcdma abilites acording to microsoft. So perhaps this is a regional labeling issue where lte is called 4g in hong kong. On the other hand i have tested this phone with a blue win hd lte 10 inches away connecting to the same tmobile network, only difference is that the blu has my hotspot sim in it, while the lumia has my phone sim, and the blu win hd lte generally hits 40mbps download (when displaying lte as the connection type), while i havent seen the lumia 640 lte ds get over 25 ish.

There are a lot of differences in how the cellular page was laid out between the 2 phones, though the lumia was on 8.1 update 2, so i used windows phone insider to bring the blu win hd lte up to that major revision, though the lumia still has a newer build of os. Once on the same revision the cellular page was similar, but the blu had a lot of connection profile choices (t-mobile, net10, metropcs...) vs the lumia just has t_mobile and wont let me change. Both automatically get the same internet apn settings, which are correct.

 

[cashkennedy]

Wrote MSFT and got the following response, looks like a canned response though, not sure if they actually do know / considering it uncompatible with t-mo though:

Thank you for contacting Microsoft Mobile Device Support.

We understand that your Lumia 640 LTE dual SIM does not connect to T-Mobile LTE network. In response to this, please be advised that upon checking the IMEI - 35********, your phone shows that it was not designed to used in US market.

Please understand that you wont be able to change or customized the network of the phone because it was part of the hardware of the device.

 

[Davide Carozza]

Thanks for letting us know, cashkennedy. I'm considering both the Blu Win HD LTE and the Dual Sim LTE 640, so it's good to see the comparison. Though the greater speed of the Blu would be nice, it sounds like you're still getting great speeds on the Lumia, regardless of how they might be (mis)labeled.

 

[cashkennedy]

Yeah, you deffinetly seem to get faster then 3g speeds out of it, but not proper lte speeds at least with t-mobile. It might work just fine with at&t. Id probably recommend the lumia either way over the blu just because the blu has some odd glitch with the touchscreen at the moment which makes any typing other then wordflow really painfull cause it only registers like half of your taps. On the other hand the blu has real buttons for back / start / search, but I also got used to swiping the virtual buttons up and down on the lumia within like 2 days (I turned autohide off).

 

[perpleSlerp]

The glossy back on the phone is lame, other then that this phone is pretty awesome as mentioned in all the other reviews.

Glossy black? I thought the black on the 640 was a matte finish?

 

[cashkennedy]

lol, I said the glossy back, as in the rear plastic case. I have the white color. I actually got used to it after a few days, and the phone feels really good in hand cause of the exact square sides vs curves. The phone also has a really good weight / weight distribution and feels rigid. So other then the lack of physical buttons on the front, and lack of a camera button, the hardware is amazing.