Microsoft has announced three smartphones at a Press event on Tuesday in New York city. It has launched a pair of Lumia devices namely Lumia 950 and Lumia 950XL smartphones that come with the liquid cooling feature. After launching its new flagship smartphones, Microsoft took off the wraps of Lumia 550, which is considered as Windows budget smartphone. Although the company didn’t spoke much about Lumia 550, but it gave an appearance during the event. However, the launch of Lumia 550 seems that Microsoft is making another attempt at receiving a substantial chunk of the smartphone market share. It might be the reason to announce the affordable Lumia 550 along with high-end products. During the event, the company also announced its first laptop Surface Book and a Surface Pro 4 Tablet that runs on Windows 10 Operating system. Let us take a quick look at the specs, price and availability of the budget-friendly device, Lumia 550.
Key Specifications of Lumia 550
Display: The Lumia 550 sports a 4.7-inch AMOLED 1280×720 screen which is LTE network capable and runs on Windows 10 mobile operating system.
Processor: The new device is powered by a quad-core 1.2GHz Snapdragon 210 which is paired with an Adreno 304 GPU.
Operating System: The new Lumia 550 runs on Microsoft’s latest Windows 10 Operating system.
RAM: Lumia 550 is equipped with a memory of 1GB RAM which is not pretty good memory. However, it can accomplish basic tasks in a good way. Through this, we can understand that devices with less memory like Lumia 550 can be optimized in a better way with Windows 10.
Storage: The budget-friendly device comes with 8 GB of internal storage. Hence, it is must to expand the memory depending on your requirement via microSD. It supports up to 200 GB expandable memory via microSD card that works well with it.
Camera: The Lumia 550 sports a 5 MP snapper with an F2.4 aperture for the Rear Camera. You can capture photos which are adequate while considering the price-tag. It’s capable of taking 720p videos at 30 FPS and supports continuous autofocus. On the other side, the front camera has a 2 MP snapper which can be only used for video calls. Probably, it is not favorable to take selfies.
Battery: The new Lumia 550 is powered by a 1900mAh Li-Ion battery which is a removable battery.
Connectivity: The handset has following connectivity features:
- 4G LTE, 3G/HSPA
- Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
- DLNA
- Bluetooth v4.0
- microUSB v2.0
Color: The handset will be available in four variant colors such as red, white, blue, and black. The Lumia 550 device mostly retains the same design cues as the previous affordable Lumia smartphones.
Price and Availability
The Microsoft Lumia 550 is priced at $139 for the 8GB storage model. It will be available in the European market from December and the company is planning to expand its availability across the world in 2016. It is the best budget smartphone for developing countries along with the cost-conscious consumers in the US and Europe. Microsoft seems to emulate the Samsung model by launching multiple entry-level smartphones and offering the users to choose one among them.
These are the key specifications of the new budget-friendly device, Lumia 550 launched by Microsoft. It is another attempt by the company to launch a smartphone at an affordable price with a built-in Windows 10 mobile operating system. Other Windows 10 devices that Microsoft debuted in the Event include the Surface Pro 4 tablet and the Surface Book, the company’s first laptop. Hope, this Lumia 550 might get more response in the market. The company has not yet revealed the Indian pricing and availability of Lumia 550.
