14 DAY TRIAL // Windows Phone enthusiasts should start getting excited, as Microsoft readies its assault on the US smartphone market. The Redmond-based company is expecting to launch a few Windows Phone 8.1 handsets in the next couple of months, including new smartphones that have yet to be announced.
We have already reported on Nokia’s leaked roadmap for 2014/2015, but now let’s see what Windows Phone users should expect to be able to buy in the not so distant future.
Specifically, this article is aimed at T-Mobile customers who will soon have the chance to buy the latest Windows Phone 8.1 handset announced by Nokia several months ago, namely the Lumia 635.
We already know that the smartphone is expected to arrive in the United States, but we don’t have any info on when the Lumia 635 will go on sale and which carriers will add it to their portfolios.
Well, lucky for us, WPCentral’s Daniel Rubino shared more details on what’s to come for Microsoft and Windows Phone in the United States.
According to him, T-Mobile USA may launch the Nokia Lumia 635 in mid-July, possibly on the 16th or 17th. However, these dates are subject to change, so there’s a chance that the affordable smartphone may end up in T-Mobile’s portfolio sooner or later.
T-Mobile customers will be pleased to know that Nokia Lumia 635 may go on sale at Magenta carrier for only $129 (€95). Once again, keep in mind that these are just preliminary details, thus they may change.
Nevertheless, the Lumia 635 shouldn’t be more expansive than $150 (€110) given its hardware configuration. Speaking of which, the Windows Phone 8.1 handset is expected to offer more than decent specs for the price that customers would have to pay.
For example, the smartphone is powered by a 1.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor, an Adreno 305 graphics processing unit and only 512MB of RAM.
It would be quite a blow for other Android smartphones in the same price range if Microsoft launches a fairly improved version of Lumia 635 that would pack 1GB of RAM instead of 512MB. In fact, this has already been done and is now up for sale in China as Lumia 638.
Moving on to the display, the Lumia 635 comes with a 4.5-inch IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen display that supports 480 x 854 pixels resolution and features Corning Gorilla Glass 3 coating.
Nokia Lumia 635 features LTE support and only 8GB of storage, but users will be able to further expand storage up to 128GB via microSD card slot.
Here is hoping that Microsoft will reveal its plans for the US smartphone market in the next couple of weeks, as the Windows Phone market share seems to have suffered a slight drop since last year. Stay tuned for more on this one.