Microsoft has officially announced its first ever self-branded Lumia smartphone – the Lumia 535 – proving almost all rumours correct, which cropped up in the last couple of weeks.
Definitely targeted towards that budget-conscious set of consumers, the Lumia 535 marks the beginning of a new chapter dubbed ‘Microsoft Lumia’ in the ‘Lumia’ smartphone book.
As rumoured, the Lumia 535 features a quad-core 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 processor, 1GB RAM, 8GB internal storage with support for microSD card of up to 128GB, Windows Phone 8.1 out of the box, 5-inch (960 x 540-pixel) display protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3, 5-megapixel front and rear camera, plastic back, rounded corners – all packed up nicely in a bigger and slimmer package.
The smartphone will be available in two variants – 3G Single SIM and 3G Smart Dual-SIM models. To sweeten the deal to some extent, Microsoft has promised that Lumia 535 will receive “regular over-the-air updates”, and users will be offered 15GB of free OneDrive storage.
As far as utilities are concerned, Lumia 535 packs Cortana, Word Flow, Action Center, and Live Folders among other things.
As far as the availability of the handset goes, Lumia 535 will first arrive in Asia starting with China, Hong Kong, and then making its way to Bangladesh towards the end of November. The phones will roll out to other countries as well but Microsoft hasn’t provided any timeline.
Priced at €110 the Lumia 535 will be available in a range of colours including bright green, bright orange, cyan, dark grey, white, and black.
Microsoft Lumia 535 doesn’t really differ from its predecessors as far as the looks and design go, but it will surely make a difference considering that it now features the name ‘Microsoft’.
The branding move could very well help Windows Phone garner a great share share of the smartphone market considering that it only powers just about 2.5 per cent of all smartphones globally. Source
