MWC 2015 – Microsoft Touts Lumia 640 As Affordable Windows 10 Business Smartphone

Microsoft has unveiled two new mid-range devices at Mobile World Congress 2015 in Barcelona, the Lumia 640 and Lumia 640 XL, which the company claims are the ideal affordable smartphones for businesses looking to take advantage of the converged Windows 10 vision.

The new smartphones will ship with Windows Phone 8.1, but will be upgradable to Windows 10 when it is eventually made commercially available.

Both will ship with a free one year subscription to Office 365 and will come preloaded with Office applications like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote, 1TB of OneDrive cloud storage and 60 Skype minutes a month.

Affordable business

Stephen Elop, head Microsoft’s Devices & Services unit, says the ability work seamlessly across PC, laptop and mobile on Office and other future Windows 10 universal apps, will be a key differentiator for the platform.

“That makes the Nokia Lumia 640 fantastic for consumers, but it also makes these devices great for business users,” he said. “It has Microsoft services built in that you need for work – Office, Outlook and OneDrive.

“It works seamlessly with other devices and fulfils the needs of IT Decision Makers with things like enterprise grade security, seamless integration with business IT, platform convergence and these devices will upgrade to Windows 10.

Windows 10 vision

“Plus for business, this offers amazingly good value. With the affordable prices of these devices, you can get three Lumia 640 or 640 XL devices for the price of just one competing flagship device with comparable business features.”

Both are powered by a 1.2GHz Qualcomm processor and 1GB of RAM, with the key differences being screen size and camera. The Lumia 640 has a five inch display and eight megapixel camera, while the XL has a 5.7 inch screen and 13 megapixel camera.

The Lumia 640 will be released in April in Dual SIM LTE, Dual SIM 3G and single SIM varities, with prices ranging from between €139 and €159. The XL will cost between €189 and €219. Elop mentioned Dixons Carphone and O2 specifically as partners for the UK, but it is unclear which other UK operators or retailers will stock the devices.

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