14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft officially introduced the Nokia Lumia 530 in India last week, but did not offer an exact release date for the Windows Phone handsets.
However, major retailer Snapdeal started taking pre-orders for the smartphone soon after the announcement, so those who wanted the phone only had to pay Rs 7,345 ($120 / €90) for the device.
According to Snapdeal, Nokia Lumia 530 should arrive in stock in the third week of August, which means customers who pre-order the smartphone will still have to wait one more week in order to get their devices.
The good news is Windows Phone fans who did not pre-order the Nokia Lumia 530 through Snapdeal will be able to buy right now directly from Nokia online store and for a lower price.
Nokia Lumia 530 is now available for purchase in India for only Rs 7,199 outright, which is about $117 or €88. It’s also worth mentioning that the smartphone is available in four color options (orange, dark grey, green and white) and orders are delivered in 4 working days.
Keep in mind that this is the first handset to ship with Windows Phone 8.1 operating system out of the box, so those who plan to switch to this platform from another operating system may want to take it into consideration.
Unfortunately, the Lumia 530 is not really a worthy upgrade for those who already own the Nokia Lumia 520, the best-selling Windows Phone handset to date.
Nevertheless, Nokia Lumia 530 is quite a decent smartphone that comes equipped with a 1.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 processor, an Adreno 302 graphics processing unit and only 512MB of RAM.
The affordable smartphone is packed with only 4GB of storage inside, but users will be able to further expand storage up to 128GB via microSD card slot.
On the back, the Lumia 530 features a 5-megapixel photo snapper with 480p video recording. Sadly, it does not feature LED flash and there’s no secondary camera in the front either.
The phone’s 4-inch TFT capacitive touchscreen display supports 480 x 854 pixels resolution and 245ppi (pixel per inch), which is kind of low but good enough for an entry-level device.
As mentioned in the title, Microsoft launched the dual-SIM version of the Lumia 530 in India, so users will be able to fit in two microSIM cards instead of one. Other connectivity options available within the Lumia 530 include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, microUSB and 3G HSDPA.