Nokia Lumia 610 To Hit Stores Next Week

Nokia’s cheapest Windows Phone, the Lumia 610, will arrive at once week as the handset maker battles to restore its fortunes in the mobile sector.

The device will be available on monthly contracts of £15 per month from the usual suspects, as then as the Carphone Warehouse and Phones4u. A SIM-free 610 will be sold through Expansys for £189.99 with free delivery.

Nokia first unveiled the handset at this year’s Mobile World Congress, and said it would ship with a budget 800MHz processor and only 256MB of RAM. This tiny amount of RAM has prompted concern at its potential to handle resource hungry apps. For instance, it will not be able to run Microsoft’s VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) client Skype, which needs 512MB of RAM.

The handset as well comes with a 3

The handset as well comes with a 3.7 inch WVGA touchscreen running at a resolution of 800×480 pixels, a 5Mpixel camera with LED flash, GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and a 1300mAh battery. It is available in four colours, and Orange will reportedly exclusively offer a version of the Lumia 610 with nearly-field communication capabilities.

A major plus for the handset is that it runs Windows Phone 7.5 Tango, the same then-regarded OS in other words running on its higher-specification peers, the Lumia 710, Lumia 800 and Lumia 900. This OS offers features just as Nokia Drive, Maps and Music apps.

Confirmation of the standard Tango operating system will do much to allay fears that the Windows Phone mobile operating system would fork into a stripped-down Windows Phone OS on its way for cheaper handsets.

Earlier this week Microsoft and Nokia suffered the embarrassment of seeing Windows Phone handsets slip behind Linux smartphones in terms of market share figures, anyway according to the latest figures from IDC.

Indeed, according to IDC Android and iOS now totally dominates the mobile sphere, with Symbian bringing up the third spot at just 6.8 percent. However IDC as well reported that Linux smartphones enjoyed a 3.5 percent market share, yet Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS, upon which Nokia has hitched its collective wagon, only manages 3.3 percent.

And matters were not helped last month when Reuters reported that questions were being raised over the level of marketing support being offered to mobile operators for the Nokia/Microsoft smartphone push.