At the low-end of the smartphone market, in late August, Microsoft unveiled the Nokia Lumia 530.
The most amazing thing about this device is its price tag, which stood at just $149 outright. Since then, in various pre-paid offers, the price has dipped below $50.
With Microsoft recently abandoning its use of the “Nokia” brand for smartphones, it has the rare honour of potentially being one of the last of the Windows Phone/Lumia smartphones to use the iconic brand.
So can a decent Windows Phone be had on a budget? It’s time to find out.
Microsoft’s Lumia 530 runs Windows Phone 8.1 with the Lumia Cyan update and is built around a 1.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 processor, and connects through HSPA+/3.5G rather than 4G.
It contains 4 gigabytes of built in storage, expandable through microSD cards, along with 512 MB RAM, plus 15 gigabytes of free OneDrive storage.
As with Nokia devices in the past, it features snap-on covers in a range of colours, including bright orange, bright green, white and dark grey.
The device also includes a 4.0-inch FWVGA LCD display with a 5-megapixel camera.
Microsoft claims its removable 1430mAh battery has a talk time of “up to 13 hours”, and should last most users a full day on a single charge under normal use.
This review is based on a test unit on loan from Microsoft.
Andrew Sadauskas is a former journalist at SmartCompany and a former editor of TechCompany.
