Microsoft Lumia 650 with aluminium frame to debut in "select" European markets

Nokia and then Microsoft’s Lumia has so far been banking heavily on their low-end, low-cost devices to woo the mobile handset market. And while these devices often offered decent hardware and software specifications, they never shined in the design department. With its latest launch- Microsoft Lumia 650, the brand has finally come of age in terms of high-end designing. The 5-inch mobile handset now wears a “highly polished, diamond cut and anodized aluminium frame.

Slated to go on sale in “select” European markets on Thursday, February 18, at “around” $199 before taxes and subsidies, the aluminium-frame Microsoft Lumia 650 scales at only 122 grams while measuring 6.9mm in depth.

The age of awkwardly bulky Windows phones seems to be over, although obviously, Redmond’s “attention to every detail” and “highest level of craftsmanship” take their toll on battery capacity. On the bright side, the Lumia 650 does feature the 550’s cameras to 8 and 5 megapixels, also doubling down on internal storage (to 16GB) while retaining the always handy microSD card slot.

Not exactly a powerhouse, the fourth Lumia released with Windows 10 Mobile pre-loaded packs in a quad-core 1.3 GHz Snapdragon 212 processor and 1GB RAM. Business customers are its primary target audience. The typical “best of Microsoft productivity features” of the aluminium-frame Lumia 650 include Office apps, OneDrive, Cortana, enterprise-grade security, and various other business services.