Nokia just announced the Lumia 610, their cheapest Windows Phone to date. If it looks familiar, then you’re right. It has the same design as the 18 month old Nokia C7, which was recycled last summer to become the 701, but whereas both those devices were made out of metal, the Lumia 610 is all plastic. In terms of specifications, every Windows Phone that’s ever shipped either has a 1 GHz or 1.4 GHz processor and 512 MB of RAM, this little sucker has an 800 MHz processor and 256 MB of RAM. We need some extensive hands-on time to see how it performs, but initial impressions are pretty good. Now we were expecting Nokia to cut back on other specifications, like the camera and display, but this doesn’t appear to be the case. The Lumia 610 has a 5 megapixel camera and a 3.7 inch 800 x 480 pixel resolution screen. All of that will cost you just 190 Euros when it lands in Q2 of this year.
The bigger question is where will this device ship? If it gets sold in rich Western European countries and North America, then will people buy this thing instead of the more expensive Lumia 710? Also, how will developers deal with the lower end specifications of the Lumia 610 since it’s the first of its kind? Say hello to Windows Phone fragmentation, it finally had to happen folks. All that being said, we’re extremely excited about this device. When other companies have attempted to sell low end smartphones, they basically put Android on the lowest end hardware that would run it. That resulted in piss poor performance and a user experience that would make you want to pull your hair out. This thing on the other hand, it looks like it can bridge that gap between feature phone and smartphone.
What say you, are you excited about the Lumia 610 and how it fits into Nokia’s strategy?
[Image Credit: SlashGear]