It was unveiled on September 4, 2014, at IFA Berlin, alongside the Lumia 730.

This device is a smartphone with particular emphasis on selfies, aided by a 5-megapixel, wide-angle front-facing camera.

The Nokia Lumia 735 and Nokia Lumia 730 Dual SIM had 8 GB internal storage capacity, and supported microSD expansion.

In May 2015, Microsoft released a Microsoft-branded version of the device (exclusive to Verizon in the US) with improved hardware (16 GB internal storage versus 8 GB).

Microsoft Cloud enabled services were integrated into the handset.