Microsoft buying Nokia for 7 Billion dollars made the headlines last year. Immediately after the deal Microsoft announced that it’ll retain the Lumia brand. Nokia, a highly reputed phone maker in India was wiped out. The company’s Chennai Plant was not a part of the Microsoft deal and lies defunct for over a year now.(There are rumours that Xiaomi will be using the plant to manufacture phones)
Fast forward to November 2014, Microsoft launches its first smartphone after the Nokia acquisition. The Microsoft Lumia 535, while this device still looks like other members of the Lumia family it does not have the iconic Nokia branding. The device is the successor to the Nokia Lumia 530 which was Nokia’s most affordable offering.
The Microsoft Lumia 535 isn’t a huge upgrade over its predecessor. It has a 5 inch IPS display with a resolution of 960×540 pixels(qHD). The screen has grown from 4 inch to 5 inch and now comes with Gorilla Glass 3 protection. It still sports the same Snapdragon 200 Quad-Core processor clocked at 1.2GHz with 1GB of RAM. The RAM has been doubled (512MB to 1GB) and so has the internal storage (4GB to 8GB).
The primary camera is a 5 megapixel autofocus shooter with LED flash. The camera still does 480p video which is disappointing, there are phones that are substantially cheaper capable of doing 1080p. The front facing camera is also a 5 megapixel sensor but has a 24mm wide-angle lens capable of clicking selfies.
The device is bigger and thanks to that it now gets a bigger battery rated at 1905mAh. The Microsoft Lumia 535 is priced at Rs 9199 and will be available on 28th November. The phone offers good hardware to run Windows Mobile 8.1 OS and it checks all the boxes.
