First Impression: Microsoft Lumia 535

Microsoft's budget game minus Nokia tag

Wednesday was significant for the world of mobile phones: It marked the arrival of the much-talked about smartphone from Microsoft Devices, the first without the Nokia branding. Questions on a shift in terms of design, marketing, etc, had crowded the minds of consumers for sometime. To address these, the company launched the Lumia 535 dual-SIM smartphone.

Priced at Rs 9,199, the device will hit the stores on Friday.

Let's first consider the Lumia 535. The smartphone comes with Windows Phone 8.1 and the Lumia Denim update. A five-inch IPS LCD display with a qHD (540x960 pixels) resolution and a pixel density of 220 an inch make the screen quite vibrant. Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection adds value to the display quality, as well as the durability of the device. At 146g, the device is light and easy to hold.

The Lumia 535 boasts of a powerful quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 processor, with 1.2GHz and 1GB of RAM. The built-in storage of 8GB, further expandable through a microSD card up to 128GB, isn't bad for this price range. More, you get 15GB of free OneDrive cloud storage.

Now, let's come to selfies, the phenomenon that seems to have taken the world by storm. A five-megapixel wide-angle front-facing camera, capable of clicking appealing pictures, deserves a mention. Making video calls through Skype is something we'll look at when we receive a review piece. The rear camera is a five-megapixel one, too, with an LED flash. At this point, we cannot say much about its quality.

Features from Microsoft such as the Office suite, Xbox and Outlook could prove to be handy for many. The Lumia 535 will be available in multiple colours such as cyan, green, orange, white, grey and black.

For the short period during which we had access to the device, we liked it. But look out for the overall review, to be out soon.