Microsoft took the wraps off a pair of new Lumias in Barcelona. Unfortunately no flagship phones were to be had, but the former Nokia hardware team showed off handsets adding even more pressure to the mid-range market.
The Lumia 640 looks like it’ll be fairly standard Windows Phone fare. A 5″ 720p display will be paired up with a Qualcomm 400 and 1GB of RAM and a 2500mAh battery. The rear camera will be an 8MP shooter and the front will have a 1MP sensor for video chat.
The Lumia 640 XL takes the place of the 1320, moving the size up to 5.7″, a 13MP camera, and a 3000mAh battery. Both phones come with 8GB of internal storage with support for up to 128GB MicroSD cards. Both phones will ship with Windows Phone 8.1 Update 1, but will be updated to Windows 10 when available.
The design is plastic, polycarb shells in a variety of classic colors Orange, White, Yellow, and my favorite Cyan. The naming convention should be less confusing than the lower powered 1320, which had a higher number naming convention than Nokia’s flagship phones.
The positioning makes sense, placing these features in-between the upper entry-level Lumia 635 and the higher mid-range Lumia 830.
Microsoft also showed off a new fold-able Bluetooth keyboard specifically designed for phones.
Buying one of these new Lumias will come with a one year subscription to Office 365, which includes a license for a tablet or PC, 1TB of cloud storage, and 60 minutes a month for Skype. A one year Office 365 license sold on it’s own costs $70.
Not bad at all considering the 640 will retail for 139€ for a 3G version and 159€ for the LTE variant. The 640 XL will sell for 189€ for 3G and 219€ for LTE. Both phones should be available in April worldwide with partnerships already announced with AT&T in the United States.