Microsoft Lumia 535 Announced

Microsoft has officially dropped the “Nokia” name from their smartphone brands starting with yesterday’s launch of the new Microsoft Lumia 535. This phone, if you hadn’t heard, is the first phone that will sport the “Microsoft Lumia” brand name since Microsoft purchased Nokia earlier this year. The phone itself looks to be a low to mid range device with nothing too impressive going on other than the name shift. Here are the hardware specs I could find:

• 5 inch display
• Windows 8.1 with Lumia Denim upgrade
• 5 MP cameras (front and back)
• 1.2 GHz quad-core Snapdragon 200 processor
• 1 GB RAM
• 8 GB memory
• microSD card slot (up to 128 GB)
• 3G connectivity (no LTE)
• single or dual SIM

The device is available now in ‘select markets’ for $135. As the phone was only announced yesterday, I haven’t seen any word on which carriers/MVNOs will support the phone, but I suspect AT&T will, as they carry several Lumia devices already. Overall, nothing too thrilling or exciting, but the name change is definitely a huge shift. It will be interesting to see if dropping the Nokia brand helps or hurts the phone sales. Personally, I’m suspecting the latter, as Nokia is a pretty well-known brand. What do you think? Let me know in the comments!]]>