After launching its pair of Lumia smartphones namely Lumia 950 and Lumia 950XL running Windows 10 operating system in India, Microsoft has now rolled out its most affordable smartphone Lumia 550 with 4G LTE support. Microsoft Lumia 550 smartphone hit store shelves on Monday in select markets. The device was initially announced back in the month of October and now it is available in Europe starting December 7. With the launch of its most affordable Windows 10 running Lumia 550 smartphone, Microsoft seems to make another attempt at gaining a substantial chunk of the smartphone market share.

Microsoft persists to be a strike in the mobile platform dominated by other giant smartphone manufacturing firms like Apple’s iPhones and by smartphones running Google’s Android software. Even there is a substantial conflict among popular companies in the smartphone market, Microsoft aims to give a kick to all other smartphone makers with this new Windows 10 Lumia 550, the most budget-priced smartphone.

Microsoft has launched Windows 10 operating system early this year that offers distinctive new features and a similar look and experience across PCs, tablets, and phones. Moreover, Windows 10 could be the company’s ultimate effort to convince consumers to give its new mobile phones a try. Recently, the company has launched its pair of Windows 10 operated Lumia 950 and Lumia 950XL smartphones in India, both of which are higher-priced but offer beefier specs.

Specifications of Lumia 550

The new Lumia 550 sports a 4.7-inch display with a pixel resolution of 1280 x 720pixels. The Lumia 550 is powered by a 1.1 Gigahertz quad-core Qualcomm processor paired with a memory of 1GB RAM. However, the device has no good memory through which we can understand that the devices even with less memory can be optimized in a better way with Windows 10. On the storage front, the smartphone includes an internal storage of 8GB which can be further expandable upto 200 GB via microSD card that works well with it.

The device comes equipped with a 5 MP snapper with an F2.4 aperture for the Rear Camera through which you can capture photos which are adequate and is capable of taking 720p videos at 30 FPS. On the other side, the front camera has a 2 MP snapper which can be only used for video calls. Apparently, it is not favorable to take selfies. The phone also comes with Glance Screen, which displays the date, time, notifications and calendar appointments while in standby mode.

On the Connectivity front, the handset supports 4G LTE, 3G/HSPA, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, DLNA, Bluetooth v4.0 and microUSB v2.0. The new Lumia 550 is powered by a 1900mAh Li-Ion battery which is a removable battery. The handset will be available in two variant colors such as matte black and glossy white. The smartphone is preloaded with Windows 10 and signature Microsoft apps such like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneDrive, Outlook Mail, Calendar, Skype and Cortana, Microsoft’s personal assistant.

The new Microsoft Lumia 550 lacks two Windows 10 features offered by the high-priced smartphones, Lumia 950 and 950 XL. Windows Hello biometric recognition isn’t supported, so you won’t be able to use your face or fingerprint to unlock the phone. Windows 10 Continuum is also missing in Lumia 550, so you can’t set up a Microsoft Display Dock with an accompanying monitor, mouse and keyboard to use the phone as a desktop PC replacement.

Price and Availability

The Redmond, the Washington-based software giant announced that sales of the new Microsoft Lumia 550 smartphone start Monday in Europe. The company has announced that the smartphone will be made available for purchase across other regions all over the world in the coming weeks. The new Lumia 550 smartphone is priced at $139 (approximately Rs. 9300).