For the past few weeks there have been rumors that Microsoft would soon announce a successor to the popular Lumia 520 smartphone. Today it did just that. Microsoft announced Lumia 530 earlier today, this device happens to be the cheapest Windows Phone 8.1 smartphone on the market. Given the Lumia 520’s phenomenal success there’s no surprise in seeing Microsoft trying to replicate that performance. Soon after the official announcement T-Mobile confirmed that it will be carrying the device in the U.S.
T-Mobile also carried the slightly modified version of the Lumia 520. It was called Lumia 521 on Magenta and was one of the best selling Windows Phone devices on the network.
Meant for budget conscious customers the Lumia 530 has a 4-inch FWVGA display and is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 processor aided by 512MB of RAM. There’s 4GB of onboard storage and a microSD card for external expansion. It has a 5 megapixel rear facing camera.
Windows Phone 8.1 comes preinstalled on the Lumia 530 which brings features like Cortana, Microsoft’s proactive virtual assistant, and ties users in with Microsoft services like Office, Skype and OneDrive.
Global roll out of the Lumia 530 is going to take place next month. T-Mobile hasn’t provided an exact date as yet, only confirming that it will offer the Lumia 530 “later this year.” The carrier hasn’t provided any information about pricing as well so we’ll have to wait on that too.