Microsoft has unveiled a slick-looking entry-level mobile, the Lumia 540, packed with solid features and specs for about £100 – but so far there’s no word on a UK release.
Microsoft announced the budget-friendly Lumia 540 Dual SIM smartphone earlier today and confirmed that the device, which is mostly going to be targeting developing markets, will cost less than $150 (£102) when it’s released.
For that moderate outlay you get an awful lot of phone. The device is kitted out with a 5-inch HD screen, packing a pixel density of 294 pixels-per-inch, which matches the great-value Lumia 640 which launched at MWC last month.
Like the Lumia 640, you also get an 8-megapixel primary camera, but the Lumia 540 packs a beefy 5-megapixel wide-angle secondary snapper for capturing a big group in one shot.
You get 8GB of internal storage space and 15GB of free OneDrive cloud storage to back up your files. That online storage is boosted by an extra 15GB if you turn on auto-upload for your snapshots, and you can also slap a memory card into the phone’s micro SD slot to give you up to 128GB more space.
A quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 chip powers the Lumia 540, clocked at 1.2GHz and backed up by 1GB RAM, which should provide decent performance for a Windows Phone device. A 2,200mAh removable battery should give all-day battery life, and at just 152g it isn’t a heavy old beast either.
Software-wise the Lumia 540 will come rocking Windows Phone 8.1 out of the box, but you’ll have a Denim update waiting for you as soon as you power it on and Windows 10 will hit the device later in the year when it’s finally released.
The Lumia 540 Dual SIM will be released this May, available in glossy layered cyan, matte black, orange or white, for a price of $149. On launch it’ll appear in Italy, IMEA (India, Middle East and Africa) and APAC (Asia Pacific) regions, but sadly there’s no word yet on whether it will creep any further into Europe.
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