Amid big announcements during #Windows10Devices launch on Tuesday, Microsoft took a moment to unveil the affordable Lumia 550 smartphone. The affordable handset may not have stolen the limelight during the grand unveiling of Lumia 950 and Lumia 950XL, but it did attract the budget-conscious lot. Priced at $139 (around Rs. 9,000), the Lumia 550 will arrive in the market in December. Microsoft did not seem too keen showing off its budget device since the excitement was surrounded around the high-end launches.
The Lumia 550 packs decent features but it's not sure if they do complete justice to the price tag. The handset comes with a 4.7-inch HD IPS display with a pixel density of 315ppi. It is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 210 quad-core processor, 1GB RAM and 8GB onboard storage expandable up to 200GB. The handset uses Adreno 304 GPU for graphics.
Moving on, the Lumia 550 sports a decent 5-megapixel rear-facing camera with f/2.4 aperture, HD video recording and LED flash. On the front side, there's a 2-megapixel sensor with f/2.8 aperture and 480p video recording.
The Lumia 550 is powered by a 2,100mAh battery, which the company claims to deliver 16 hours of talk time in 2G and 14 hours in 3G, NDTV Gadgets reports. There is a micro USB port at the bottom of the device to charge the handset and connect to PC.
The only aspect we were impressed about the Lumia 550 was the Windows 10 Mobile OS, which includes Microsoft Edge browser, new Outlook and Office, OneDrive integration, Cortana voice assistant and Glance Screen. The handset also supports high-speed 4G LTE bandwidths.
Looking at the specs, it is clear the handset is aimed at developing markets. But the competition is quite tough given the price range. For instance, in India, handsets with a price tag under Rs 10,000 come with much better specs. But Lumia fans can experience the Windows 10 at a very low cost.
