Microsoft Announces First ‘Non-Nokia’ Lumia Smartphone – For Under £100

Microsoft has revealed the Lumia 535, its first smartphone since it completed the takeover of Nokia’s handset business earlier this year.

The budget smartphone features mid-range specifications but comes in a variety of colour schemes as Microsoft tries to attract younger consumers.

The company describes the Lumia 535 as its “5x5x5” device – featuring a 5 inch screen and 5MP front and rear cameras – at an affordable price, which Microsoft says will be around €110 (£89) when it comes to the UK early next year.

It is powered by a 1.2 GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 processor and 1GB of RAM, and also features 8 GB of on-board storage, which can be expanded to up to 128GB via a microSD card, with Microsoft also throwing in 15GB of free storage on OneDrive.

Flexible

Microsoft is particularly keen to highlight the camera features on the Lumia 535, which has the same wide-angle front-facing camera as the Lumia 730 and Lumia 735 handsets, giving the chance to capture the perfect selfie but also providing the chance to get more in shot during Skype calls.

The Lumia 535 will be available in single and dual SIM modes, and will come running Windows Phone 8.1, meaning all the latest features, including Cortana, Skype and OneNote are all present and correct. This should make it very appealing to developers and enterprise customers as a low-cost unit, much like its predecessor, the Nokia Lumia 520, which became the biggest-selling Windows Phone yet.

It will be available in cyan, bright green, bright orange, white, dark grey, and black.

The Lumia 535 is the first Lumia device not to feature the Nokia name, following the £4.6 billion buyout of its smartphone division by Microsoft in April. The company officially began rebranding last month, starting with the websites and social media pages formerly owned by Nokia, following the news that that Microsoft was planning to move the Nokia.com website over to its existing website as part of its Christmas consumer push.

Do you know all about Microsoft Windows Phone? Take our quiz!