Microsoft launched the Lumia 540 in an attempt to catch up to the hot $200 smartphone market, which in recent times has seen many new launches trying to dethrone the one before.
A subtle improvement over the Lumia 535, the Lumia 540 ups the game with a higher resolution 1280 x 720 pixel 5-inch display. It’s powered by a Quad-core Snapdragon 200 chip running at 1.2GHz and has 1GB of RAM. The 8GB of internal memory is expandable via microSD cards. The camera is now upped to 8 megapixels coupled with a single LED flash, with a 5MP wide-angle front-facing lens, just like the Lumia 535. There’s a little more battery crammed into the body, which is now rated at 2200mAh. It still is user replaceable.
It probably isn’t fair to compare every spec of the Lumia 540 with a similarly-priced Android smartphone, since they run different operating systems. But in terms of feature-set, the Lumia 540 is certainly behind the curve by not offering features like 720p HD video recording. Then there are phones like the Yu Yureka or the recently-launched Xiaomi Mi4i, that have further upped the spec/feature offering in the Rs. 10,000 price range. Let’s just say the Lumia 540 is not going to impress many on paper.
What it does offer are the bright colour options like Orange and Cyan, along with the typical Black and White. The Windows Phone 8.1 ‘Denim’ operating system also comes with tight integration to Microsoft services like Skype and software like MS Office. Also, in case you missed it, many popular India-centric apps like Paytm, Ola, Gaana etc. are available on the Windows Store.
At Rs. 10,199, it isn’t priced too shabbily. We only hope that the Microsoft service offerings and the easy online/offline availability are good enough reasons for new smartphone buyers to consider this phone in their shortlist.
Leave a Reply