14 DAY TRIAL // After Windows 10 Mobile becomes official at some point this autumn, Microsoft is expected to unveil two flagship models that will either be called the Lumia 940 and 940 XL or, as we recently told you, the Lumia 950 and 950 XL.
But according to a report coming from hit-and-miss Asian publication Digi Times, Microsoft is also prepping two inexpensive Windows 10 Mobile phones which will be marketed in the $80 / €73 price range.
Given their price tag, we shouldn’t expect to see anything too amazing reside under the hood. Still, Microsoft will be partnering up with Qualcomm for these models and the US chip giant will be providing them with the Snapdragon 210 platform on board. The chipset has four Cortex-A7 cores clocked at 1.1GHz plus Adreno 304 GPU.
It comes embedded with Bluetooth 4.1 and 802.11n Wi-Fi and can support resolutions of up to 720p, 8MP cameras with 1080p video capture and playback and H.265 hardware encoding.
The budget Windows 10 Mobile devices are aimed at China
The cellular modems inside the chips have multi-band 3G and LTE and the radio supports dual SIM configurations. Microsoft wants to market these phones on the Chinese market, hence the dual SIM and LTE option.
The two budget Windows Phones should be announced sometime in Q3 and be rolled out on the market around Q4, just in time for the holiday spending spree.
Qualcomm has decided to supply low-end chips to Microsoft, as an effort to counter competition coming from MediaTek and Spreadtrum in the mid-range and low-end sector.
On top of that, Qualcomm also partnered up with China-based low-cost chip maker Allwinner, in a move that’s reminiscent of the Intel/Rockchip partnership of last year.
The solution developed in collaboration with Allwinner will be designed specifically for tablets with phone functionalities. Qualcomm plans to market these devices in Europe, US, and emerging markets.
Tablets with phone capabilities have already become pretty popular in countries like India, so the US chip maker is hoping customers will appreciate having a device with a spacious screen they can use to make phone calls too.
Going back to Microsoft, we’re pretty curious to hear more about the specs of the low-end phones. We’ll come back to the story when we have more information to share with you.