Nokia Lumia 610 Hands-on Review

A heavily rumored handset, the Nokia Lumia 610 was finally announced today here at MWC 2012. As expected, the 610 is the first real budget-friendly Windows Phone, expected to retail for about $255 (EUR 189), which is pretty decent for a Windows Phone, as long as there's not too much compromise with the performance of the device.

In terms of design, it's clearly visible that the device is targeted at the younger crowd with its fresh, colorful appearance. The Lumia 610 is going to come in a number of different colors like white, cyan, magenta and, of course, black, for the fans of the more conservative looks. Around the sides of the device, there's a very glossy plastic, again in the same color as the handset, which is quite the attention-grabber. However, make no mistake, the phone is all-plastic and quite lightweight, so it won't surprise you with any premium feel. Despite this, we think it's one cool-looking handset.


In order to bring us this low-end Windows Phone, Nokia and Microsoft have worked to lower the OS's system requirements, and, understandably, what we get on the Nokia Lumia 610 is a single-core 800MHz processor, coupled with 256MB of RAM. Still, this shouldn't bother you, guys, as the operating system is still running very, very fluidly on the phone. We have no worries whatsoever about the performance of the handset. However, we can't be sure about the FPS that will be observed when playing heavier 3D games, but for general purposes, the Nokia Lumia 610 specs are good enough.

In terms of software, the UI is the stock one, but Nokia is pre-loading its special apps for Maps, Drive, Music, Pulse and so on, so there will be a lot of added functionality with Nokia's Windows Phones as a whole.

Unfortunately, there's no concrete Lumia 610 release date given, but we should see the handset appear on shelves no later than Q2 of this year.