If you don't mind Windows phones - and I have come to really appreciate them - this is a really speedy and well equipped phone. The camera is amazing and as most apps can be stored on the SD card, even the meagre 8 GB of original storage doesn't spoil the experience.

Never having had a 'Smartphone' before and relied upon a Steam driven Samsung that has given many years of service, I decided after some consideration and coercion from a hi tech grandson to make the plunge.

It is amazing, firstly the delivery from Giff Gaff was less than 24 hours, a quick swap of the sim card and Micro Sd and I was away.

I am a user of Windows 7 so it took me about half an hour to get around windows 8.1 and feel comfortable with that. A few test phone calls and texts were fine.

I then started removing apps and sorting out the front screen. An hour later I had the phone synced to my Android Tablet for the Calendar and Tasks.

The photos that I took are from my point of view great.

The phone is responsive to the touch and all in all a great phone for the price. I now wonder why I waited so long.

 A further update. When the windows 10 update originally came out I updated the phone with i must say a certain amount of trepidation. The update was fine but I have to say the phone was a little less responsive than 8.1. I have now updated the phone with the 'Anniversary update' and have noticed a major improvement in speed and an improvement with battery useage.

In my opinion this is still an excellant smartphone at the price.

For those of you old enough to remember the seconda watch adverts inthe late 70s early 80s this saying is apt. 129.00 for a phone of this calibre is insane. I know it doesnt have the same amount of apps you get with apple or android but there is still some good ones. You get expandable storage and great battery life, great camera and a superb screen for your money. If your looking for a phone thats great value buy this you won't be disappointed. 

the Lumia 640 is a budget phone with impressive specs! Firstly and importantly I considered what it was I wanted from a mobile phone. Being senior in years (60) I wanted a screen large enough to see easily. Then what do you use a mobile for? Me I'm disabled and can't talk very easily so an easy to use keyboard to enable me to text, email was important. The important apps work fine (Amazon, ebay, giffgaff, banking, google, hotmail etc). Ok so a flagship Android is better for apps but I personally can't justify the flagship price tag!

the camera takes excellent photos too. I previously had a galaxy note which was great but full of 'bloatware' aimed at the younger user.

I like my 640 and won't be changing it unless the 940 when it is released is better. At the end of the day it's personal choice, Android, apple or windows... I choose windows!

For the last few years I was provided with an iPhone by my work, which I came to hate (the phone that is).  My wife had a GiffGaff Windows phone for ayear that I helped set up and which she really likes (a 635) so when I needed a new phone (as I changed job) I thought of following her.  I have had the 640 for three weeks and really like it.  Battery life is good and it does everything I want.  A few times it took a while to work out how to do things - but I love the freedom to work it out!

So a few apps are missing, but sometime soon the developers will wake up to Windows phones and realise that they have lost a market.  So my advice is 'go for it' and save yourself a pile!

I was on the fence for a very long time on this phone, concerned that the processor and screen wouldn't be good enough. Turns out, I had nothing to worry about because this phone is snappy both on and offline and the screen is vibrant and sharp enough.

The camera is decent too, but my favourite feature by far is the battery life. 48 hours is child's play for this phone despite regularly using Bluetooth audio and YouTube.

The phone punches well above it's price tag.

Brilliant service from giffgaff and phone delivered next day within the one hour delivery window I was given. This is my first windows phone coming from Android and I love it. Very easy to set up and the phone works like a dream. Great WiFi and network connection, clear call quality and the live tiles are great and make for a more interesting start screen. The 'Here' map app supplied is great and the calendar syncs beautifully with my calendar on Outlook , even giving you directions to events you may have entered. Battery life is good, typically two days with general use. I also purchased a Cyan replacement back cover from eBay for a tenner ( twenty quid on Amazon!) Though the black cover supplied is less slippy. I cannot see me going back to Android now and when the 640 gets the windows 10 update at the end of July, I am hoping it will just make it even better. All in all, great phone for a great price from a great network provider.

I bought this to tied me over whilst deciding which top end smartphone to get... I have used iPhones from day 1 up until the 5s and decided that the iPhone 6 was no improvement over the 5s only the screen size and the Samsung s6 a few of my mates use and complain too much so that was the S6 out of the question. Now I've been using this Microsoft 640 it has changed my opinion totally regarding Microsoft... You get allot for £129 size and spec wise and the operating system is great too! The build quality is of a good standard and the feel of it in your hand is just right. You can remove the back and replace them with different colours ( I have just bought the orange cover and it look well) you can also remove the battery if necessary. The screen is also a good size of 5'' that is good in direct sunlight and quick at responding to all your commands. The sound quality of this phone is good with an adjustable equaliser so you can have it to your required sound. The battery lasts way longer than my previous iPhone 5s that just scraped 1 day but the 640 in some cases can do almost 2 days.

Microsoft 640 processor is 1.2 Ghz quadcore the iphone 6 is 1.4 Ghz duel core

Pixels per inch on the Microsoft 640 5'' screen is 294 and on the iPhone 6 4.7'' screen is 326

Microsoft 640 battery capacity is 2500 mAh the iPhone 6 is 1810 mAh

Microsoft memory 1GB and the iPhone 6 is 1GB memory

Free cloud storage with Microsoft is 30GB and with Apple its 5GB

The basic cost of an iPhone 6 16GB is £499 and the 128GB is £669

The basic cost of a Microsoft 640 8GB is £129 and a 128GB micro sd card is between £20 and £40 Total = £169 Maximum

I will be using this Microsoft 640 until the latest flagship Lumia arrives which I believe it to be a Microsoft Lumia 940 and 940xl and yes the Microsoft store is nowhere near as good as Apple store but with the new Windows 10 approaching that will all change and make it easier for developers to make applications thus having a larger app store. This cheap £129 phone has changed my opinion on Apple and Samsung and both really are money grabbing company's who really do charge way over the odds for something that you can get way way cheaper. If you are thinking of buying this phone you will not be disappointed as you get a hell of alot for your money and should be more in my opinion. Microsoft all the way for me from now on...

Having owned Nokia 520's previously as I refuse to fork out £100's of pounds for a phone for myself, I was sorely disappointed, and refused to buy another Window's phone...until I saw this big beauty! The 520 was so slow and unresponsive, crashed whenever the mood took it (which was often) the screen was just that bit too small, and I always felt like I owned a phone that was ''a bit of a joke'' and certainly not one I would want to ''flash about the place'' or admit to owning..but, at least I never worried about possibly getting mugged for it. The differences between the 2 phones are innumerable! Fast, responsive, amazing sound, fabulous pics, clear and easy to see screen, lasts 5/6 days between charges as I'm not a heavy user, and feels like I now own a £4-500 phone! I love it, and I'm so pleased I chose it as my new phone! My son has an HTC which costs him £40/45pm on contract. He does rate it, especially compared with his previous contract a few years back for a Samsung 3, (was paying £45pm) which very quickly felt dated, unresponsive, and crashed a lot. My daughter has an iPhone 5s, which I (begrudgingly) paid a few hundred quid for, for her birthday a few months ago. Son abhors iPhones, and daughter wouldn't be seen dead with a Windows or Android. Me? I am well and truly more than happy with my ''cheap as chips'' 640, thank you very much! Btw, the £15pm GiffGaff top-ups I pay for are for my daughter's iPhone....versus...I pay £10.50pm contract from Carphone Warehouse for my 640. Not loads of mins or data, but I don't need loads. The reason that there's such a huge difference between the 520 and the 640 is that Microsoft have now taken over, and make the latter. Nokia, (once right up there with the best of mobile phone makes) seem to have lost their ability to make great phones anymore. Wherever you decide to purchase your mins and/or 640 from, just make sure you do! It's an amazing piece of kit, for a (don't tell Microsoft!) stupidly low price. Oh, I do like a bargain..sigh....

I have to say this phone is amazing! How Microsoft can afford to do such things given the meager £129 asking price is beyond me, performance wise, upgrading from an ancient HTC Wildfire S with a serious battery deficiency the difference is night and day. My friends all have galaxies or iPhones and I have to say that the performance is right up there with the big boys, it's swift and quick and I'm not even using 4G yet. I'm not an App or Game **bleep** so those thing don't interest me, all I wanted was a functional phone and easy access to my files made even better because it's Windows and it links directly to your PC even when you're away

The only thing I would say is that Giffgaff need to update their phone information as the handset you get is the Lumia 640 LTE and not the 640, the 640 has dual sim support and the LTE does not. (no biggie).

Great performance and I'd have thought a 4G handset of this caliber would be in the £300+ bracket, no complaints here it's simply a no brainer and with windows 10 taking over, soon there will be floods of Windows mobile phones hitting the market.

great phone everything is as good as a top of the range phone. Think the only problem is the lack of apps windows provides I.e snapchat

It's been few years since I have used a windows phone. OS has moved on a lot and now it has more options and tweaks you could do. Compared to Android lollipop, it's still has a long way to go. But the up side is that I bought this for my wife who likes to use it for phone calls, camera and some social media, which is perfect. It is responsive enough and also the battery life is very good for a light user it will last 3 days easy. With a nice case and a tempered glass screen protector added on, this thing is solid enough as well. 

Only thing I want to mention is that on Microsft website this model is mentioned to have dual sim capabilities, I am sure there are two variants of the same phone, the one that gifgaff sells is single sim only. I was not aware of that when I bought it.

Its great, easy to use and fast with all the features you'd want from a smartphone, the app store is rather limited but has all the main apps you'll use all the time (with more on the way after the upgrade to Windows Phone 10).

The upgrade to winphone10 on the 640 is confirmed free and it will make it even better and more connected with my Windows 10 PC.

I'd say the best feature of this phone is the 'living pictures' where a short video is taken automaticly before a shot this adds life to the image - I love it!

Also all pictures/videos you take are automatically uploaded to Onedrive which stores them in the cloud - this proccess happens in the background so you dont even notice it! - and it means that you can access them straight away on your win 10 PC which also has onedrive in the photos app.

I've been a Android user for a long time. My first phone was an HTC Desire and I've had a Samsung S2 and S3. I also have a couple of Android tablets and I had an Apple iPhone 5 for work.

My Galaxy S3 has been driving me nuts lately. It has been slow, unresponsive and annoying. Even factory resets and putting Cyanogenmod on it hasn't helped. Giffgaff's recent mail about putting everyone on 4G has pushed me into getting a new phone.

I really didn't like iOS on the Apple phone so I've been toying with the idea of getting a Windows phone for a while. I enjoy Windows 8 on my Windows tablet PC. I decided that £130 for a budget one would give me the chance to try out Windows Phone without risking a lot of cash just to see how I got on with it so I bought the Lumia 640.

To say I've been pleasantly surprised is an understatement. This phone is phenomenal value for money and I absolutely love Windows Phone. It does feel a little plasticy but solid nonetheless. Has a removable battery and although the internal storage of 8GB is rather limited, you can put in up to 128GB on an SD card. I happened to have a spare 64GB one lying around which is now living in my Lumia 640.

The screen is very good. Better than my Galaxy S3 I think. It also beats my S3 for sound quality of phone calls. Sound via Bluetooth is excellent too, sounds great playing music into my car stereo.

Windows phone 8 is really good. I love the live tile interface. The phone is extremely responsive. I was expecting there to be some lag from a cheap phone but none is evident. Graphics in games seems good. My son says Hungry Shark plays really well on it.

The supposed lack of apps on the Windows Phone platform doesn't seem to be a problem for me either. I can run all the apps I used to on Android such as Spotify, Audible, Evernote etc. The only app is used to run but can't now is the Subway points app so I've had to go back to using a Subcard.

The camera is much better than my S3 both for stills and video. I'm really impressed.

My fundamental thought on this phone is "If this is so good at £130 how good must the flagship devices be ?!"

There's every chance I'll fork out for a Lumia 940 when that comes out. If the 640 is so damn good, the 940 should be mind blowing.

This is a fabulous phone that performs so well across the board. It has converted me from android to windows.

Bought it on a £95 deal as a temporary phone to tide me over while my Motorola was being repaired, but ended up keeping it as my permament phone!

Call quality excellent, browser smooth and quick, and camera good if you use the rich capture option. Photo editing software is excellent, email synch is efficient, and it came with Office 365 which works well in it for small projects and if you get caught short having to make small edits to documents or presentations.

People make a big deal about the lack of apps, but most of the ones I use are on here, and there will be lots more available when the free windows 10 upgrade is rolled out to phones. It is true that the android version of some apps is different and possibly better, but not a big difference.

It is very durable and has survived three months in my handbag (without a case) and several falls, one of which was down a flight of stairs onto a wooden floor.

The only thing that I miss about my motorola (which was three times the price) is the HD screen, but this is plenty good enough.

I bought the Lumia 640 as I was on a budget and my old S3 was on its way out. I had heard a lot of mixed views of windows phones ago I bought it with an open mind. After all I could send it back if I didn't like it. To say I was pleasantly surprised is an understatement, I love it. And you that a heel of a lot of phone for the £119 price tag that I paid for it.

The battery life is amazing, lasts almost a full two days and I'm a heavy user. A great quality camera for the price with many ways of enhancing your photos. Yes the app store is slightly limited but all of the popular apps are there with more being added all the time, and the only one I haven't found a viable alternative to is snap chat. The one piece of advice I would give to anyone considering this phone would be to get a micro SD card to expand the memory as the internal memory is limited to 8gb. Other than that its a fantastic piece of kit.

Brilliant service from giffgaff as usual, but I've had the phone for 5months and its just died. It's back with the repair team at giffgaff so hopefully will be sorted soon. Next time I shall research a little more and maybe go a bit more up market. 

I really do not why there has been so many reviews on the web about the Lumia 640. I had no problems setting up email or any other app to be honest. My use is mainly email and the occasional whatsapp or twitter and the phone is more than good enough for that. SO what if it does not have the same app base as Android or IOS; and yes I have used both!

So overall good value for money and I hope Microsoft continue to develop the phone and not give so we are only left with a choice of Android or IOS.

I swicthed from an aged i-phone 3GS to this as the i-phone was showing its age and slowign down and I didn't want to get back on the treadmill of paying Apple prices and 'the next big thing.' Also, I was looking for budget and having tried the Windows version of 'swipe' was surprised to find I really liked it. 

I tested this against a Moto G 3rd gen. in a shop and found this to be more intuative for me. I got it for £99.99 from Argos which was the clincher really.

Pluses:

Word flow (swipe)

Tiles (I find them quick to navigate)

Video (seems very good) both compared to the 3GS and my Lumix camera. 

Middles: 

Internet browsing (it's okay but a bit odd if you are used to Safari)

Camera - it is better than the 3GS and easy to use, but not the step ahead I would have wanted/expected. 

Minuses: 

Microsoft seem to have given up on supoorting Mac owners of Lumias. There's no software on the app store to do things and I had a job finding Nokia photo transfer for Mac. I woudl have thought that my Mac would import staright into i-Photo - silly me!

No decent cases that I have found yet to protect it if you don't want a flip one. 

Most will say lack of decent apps on Microsoft app store but I am mostly okay with the choice, I think. Microsft should do more to support the range though and update their appaling website support ages which recommend products (the Nokia software mentioned above) that they don't then provide links to download. 

Overall I am happy with this choice, especially at £99.99. With Apple's idea of budget I am resigned to Windows or Android for the future and not unhappy with that. If I had the money to be lavish I would probbaly still look at Lumia or a Nexus. 

Problems:

1. Operating System: If you are unfamiliar with the Microsoft OS, then try in store before purchasing. If you are used to Android you will find it difficult getting used to this phone.
2. Low quality camera: Whilst decent megapixels the camera does not take in light well. 

I returned it within a few days of using it and am now looking for an Entry-Level Android phone.