Nokia Lumia 610 To Hit Stores Next Week

Nokia’s cheapest Windows Phone, the Lumia 610, will arrive next week as the handset maker battles to restore its fortunes in the mobile sector.

Nokia made the announcement of the budget handset on Thursday, where it said it would become available in the UK in the first week of June.

Low cost devices

The device will be available on monthly contracts of £15 per month from the usual suspects (Vodafone, O2, 3UK, Orange), as well as the Carphone Warehouse and Phones4u. A SIM-free 610 will be sold through Expansys for £189.99 with free delivery.

Nokia first unveiled the handset at this year’s Mobile World Congress, and said it would ship with a budget 800MHz processor and only 256MB of RAM. This tiny amount of RAM has prompted concern at its potential to handle resource hungry apps. For example, it will not be able to run Microsoft’s VoIP client Skype, which needs 512MB of RAM.

Storage-wise, the Lumia 610 boasts a very respectable 8GB of on-board memory, although this cannot be upgraded.

The handset also comes with a 3.7 inch WVGA touchscreen running at a resolution of 800×480 pixels, a 5Mpixel camera with LED flash, GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and a 1300mAh battery. It is available in four colours (black, cyan, white and pink), and Orange will reportedly exclusively offer a version of the Lumia 610 with near-field communication (NFC) capabilities.

A major plus for the handset is that it runs Windows Phone 7.5 Tango, the same well-regarded OS that is running on its higher-specification peers, the Lumia 710, Lumia 800 and Lumia 900. This OS offers features such as Nokia Drive, Maps and Music apps.

Confirmation of the standard Tango operating system will do much to allay fears that the Windows Phone mobile operating system would fork into a stripped-down Windows Phone OS on its way for cheaper handsets.

Nokia Fightback

Whatever the truth in the matter, there is little doubt that Nokia is facing the fight of its life to restore its fortunes in the mobile sector.

Earlier this week Microsoft and Nokia suffered the embarrassment of seeing Windows Phone handsets slip behind Linux smartphones in terms of market share figures, at least according to the latest figures from IDC.

Indeed, according to IDC Android (53 percent) and iOS (23 percent) now totally dominates the mobile sphere, with Symbian (remember that?) bringing up the third spot at just 6.8 percent. But IDC also reported that Linux smartphones enjoyed a 3.5 percent market share, but Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS, upon which Nokia has hitched its collective wagon, only manages 3.3 percent.

And matters were not helped last month when Reuters reported that questions were being raised over the level of marketing support being offered to mobile operators for the Nokia/Microsoft smartphone push.

Operators were reportedly unhappy at the lack of marketing dollars supporting the phones.

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