Microsoft Takes Aim at Budget Market with Lumia 640

Marketing_1_640XL_Home_DSIM_4GMicrosoft has unveiled the latest additions to its Lumia smartphone range at Barcelonas Mobile World Congress with the Lumia 640 and 640 XL, two devices aimed at low-to-mid budget consumers.

The phones come in a variety of colours and include 8GB of storage, a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor with 1GB of RA and both include front-facing cameras, previously absent from the lower end of the Lumia line.

The Lumia 640 offers a 5 inch HD screen with 5MP rear camera and 1MP front-facing camera, while the 640 XL is larger, with a 5.7 inch display, 13MP rear camera and 5MP front lens.

Both devices come with a one-year subscription to Office365, granting owners access to the full Office suit on the Lumia, plus one tablet and one PC or Mac, as well as 1 terabyte of storage on OneDrive and 60 minutes of Skype call-time a month for 1 year.

The 640 will be released in April, retailing at 139 (£101) for a 3G version and 159 for the LTE variant, while the 640 XL will be in stores by the end of this month, priced at 189 for the 3G version and 219 for the LTE.

While the phones will initially run Windows Phone 8.1, Microsoft has promised the models will be upgradeable once Windows 10 becomes available later this year. According to The Verge, Microsoft is waiting until the Windows 10 launch to unveil any flagship hardware, which means that Windows Phone fans hoping for a new top-of-the-line Lumia will have to hang on for later this year.

Microsoft also announced a partnership with US network AT&T to launch the AT&T Mobile Office Suit, a cloud-based mobile collaboration solution aimed at small-to-medium sized business users in the US which would offer customers secure access to voice calls, email, calendars, instant messaging, HD video conferencing and document collaboration tools, all through Windows mobile devices.

You can keep up to date with all our coverage from Mobile World Congress 2015 here.