The selfie phone will debut in the United Kingdom with Cortana personal assistant and will be available at low prices

Sep 29, 2014 20:55 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft’s very own personal assistant Cortana will be available in the United Kingdom on one more smartphone, this time on the Lumia 735 selfie phone, starting October 2.

The company has announced that its new smartphone powered by Windows Phone 8.1 will go on sale in the United Kingdom early next month, and in addition to all the great features that it brings, it will also include the local version of Cortana.

Before putting your hats on because Cortana arrives in the United Kingdom, there are some things that need to be mentioned here.

First and foremost, Cortana was already available in the country thanks to an update that Microsoft rolled out a couple of weeks ago to make the personal assistant available in new markets. As a result, a number of phones in the UK are already featuring the personal assistant, including the Lumia 930, 630, 635, and 530.

Very affordable with a contract

Microsoft’s selfie phone will be really affordable for Britons, as they will be able to purchase the Lumia 735 for only 20 British pounds with a contract from all major retailers. The company hasn’t yet disclosed pricing details without a contract.

Lumia 735 comes with a 4.7-inch OLED display, a 1.2 GHz quad-come Snapdragon processor, 8 GB of storage, 1 GB of RAM, and a wide 5-megapixel front camera specifically created for selfies. A rear mounted 6.7-megapixel camera is also available.

Cortana becoming a critical feature

Microsoft’s personal assistant Cortana is becoming a really critical feature for several products manufactured by the Redmond-based software giant, as the company is working to release it on desktop platforms as well.

Inspired by the Halo character with the same name, Cortana can be used to perform a wide array of tasks with voice commands, a thing that clearly comes in very handy on smartphones.

Microsoft, however, believes that such features would also be well received by PC users, so the upcoming Windows 9 will also include the personal assistant with pretty much the same feature lineup.

The software giant is expected to introduce a preview version of Windows 9 in early October, and an alpha build of Cortana is also likely to be part of this product, but only a few features will actually be provided. Cortana is at this point just a reminder in Windows 9 preview, but more features are expected to be added before the launch of the final product in April 2015.