Microsoft has unveiled its most affordable smartphone yet, the Lumia 430, which is priced at $70 before taxes.
The Lumia 430 is no iPhone 6 killer by any means, or even an iPhone 5 or iPhone 4 killer. However, Microsoft expects its latest handset to take a shot at success in emerging markets, where customers are more concerned about the price of their smartphones than the existence of features they will likely not need, such as a fingerprint sensor or a quad-HD display.
The dual-SIM Lumia 430 is a slightly less robust version of the $81 Lumia 435 and the $93 Lumia 532, which Microsoft introduced in January to battle it out with cheap Android handsets that are very popular in developing countries such as India.
For its impressive price tag, users get a 1.2 GHz dual-core Snapdragon 200 processor, 1 GB of RAM and 8 GB of internal storage expandable up to 128 GB using a microSD card. With those specs, users can easily play games such as Candy Crush Saga or Minecraft: Pocket Edition with little lag.
The four-inch WVGA display or 800 by 480 screen resolution and 235 pixel density is also what one would expect from a $70 phone. The rear camera is a 2 megapixel, fixed-focus shooter while the VGA front camera is 0.3 megapixels, not much, but it will do the job for video calling on Skype, which is seamlessly integrated into the device. The phone is powered by a 1,500 mAh battery.
That is what Microsoft plans to do to woo new customers away from Android. Microsoft offers an array of software built into its Windows Phones in a bid to get consumers to choose its platform, which is severely lacking as far as global market share is concerned. Research firm IDC says Windows Phone accounted for a mere 2.8 percent market share during last year's fourth quarter, actually slightly slipping from the 3 percent of the fourth quarter in 2013.
Aside from Skype, the Lumia 430 also includes 30 GB of free cloud storage on OneDrive and Microsoft Office, which could be attractive for business users who need to access their Word, Excel, or PowerPoint files on the go.
The Lumia 430 comes in black and the signature bright orange of many Windows Phones. It will become available in countries in the Asia and the Pacific region and in the Middle East and Africa as well as India, Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Belarus in April.
Windows Phone fans who are waiting for a flagship phone from Microsoft will have to be patient, as Microsoft says it does not plan on introducing a successor to its Lumia 930 or Lumia 1020 until after it has launched Windows 10 this summer.
