Microsoft to launch super-cheap Lumia 530 in the UK

Microsoft's Lumia 530 is said to be the company's cheapest Windows Phone device to ever come out. It has already been released in China and India and is now making its way to the UK markets, expected to arrive in 2 weeks time, proudly waving a price tag of $100 (£60).

The Lumia 530 is the successor to the 520 model. It comes with WP 8.1 out of the box and bumps some of the specs of Microsoft's lowest tier. Firstly, the Lumia 530 now comes with a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 clocked at 1,200 MHz and bearing an Adreno 302 graphics chip. The latter is a slight downgrade from the previously used Adreno 305 and we assume it's a result of corner-cutting in order to hit the low price point.

The device will sport the same 5 MP main camera with no flash. Also – still no front-facing camera and no ambient light sensor. The display remains at the same 4" size, however the resolution received a very slight bump – from Lumia 520's 480 x 800 pixels to the Lumia 530's 480 x 854. This steps the PPI up to 245, from 235 – not a very noticeable difference. Otherwise, the new device still sports 512 MB of RAM and still has a 1,430 mAh battery. Its internal storage has been dropped to 4 GB, again – probably due to corners being cut, but it supports a microSD card with up to 128 GB in size.

All in all, this is a very affordable, bare-bones Windows Phone device that comes with decent enough specs to run the OS fluently, as long as the user is not an app addict. It is expected to arrive in the US by the end of this year and we do not expect it to cost more than $99 (off-contract price).


via: Neowin