Microsoft Launches Lumia 535, First Lumia to Lose Nokia Branding
The first Nokia-less Lumia, the Microsoft Lumia 535, was released by Microsoft Monday after a report was announced last week about the first Lumia handset to don the Microsoft label. The company had bought Nokia's mobile phone division for $7.2 billion in April earlier this year, which included the condition for Microsoft to produce phones with the Lumia branding.
The Lumia 535 runs on the Windows Phone 8.1 operating system, Microsoft's latest version of their mobile operating system. The new Microsoft Lumia is a cut above the previous Nokia Lumia 530 and is a low-end phone aimed at the budget-conscious market.
The phone runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 chipset with a quad-core 1.2GHz processor. It has 8GB of internal storage which can be expanded with a microSD card of up to 128GB, and 1GB of RAM. It's screen 5.0-inches across with a display resolution of 960 x 540 pixels.
The Lumia phone line is better known for its colorful handset offerings and its powerful cameras. Most probably, the new Lumia 535 will be offered in a variety of colors while its cameras are at 5-megapixels strong – both the rear facing and front facing cameras.
Currently, the handset is available in China, Hongkong, and Bangladesh with the rest of the world hopefully following soon. Being an entry-level handset, the Lumia 535 will be retailing at around $135.
Still, the Windows Phone ecosystem is still a weak market by today's standards, only powering 2.5-percent of the world's mobile devices, with Google's Android OS powering a comparatively overwhelming 85-percent of the world's mobile phone market.
