Microsoft opened pre-orders for the Lumia 650 in the US and Canada a few days ago, and it will soon be available in Mexico too. Over in the UK, the new Windows 10 Mobile handset went on sale three and a half weeks ago, priced at £159.99 SIM-free and unlocked, but its price has already begun to fall.
Various retailers have recently reduced their SIM-free pricing to around the £150 level, but you can now get the Lumia 650 for considerably less.
Leading independent device retailer Carphone Warehouse had been selling the Lumia 650 on contract-free pay-as-you-go (PAYG) plans with several networks, priced at £149.99 for the handset, plus a minimum £10 purchase of PAYG credit, bringing the total cost to the same as that of buying the device SIM-free.
Now, though, Carphone Warehouse is offering the 650 on PAYG from £119.99 + £10 top-up, bringing the total cost down to as little as £129.99. To qualify for that price, you’ll have to buy the device with £10 of PAYG credit on Vodafone – which includes 150 cross-network minutes, unlimited texts and 500MB of data – but given that almost every handset that Carphone Warehouse sells is not locked to a specific network, you should be able to use it with SIMs from other operators without any problems.
The Lumia 650’s key specs include:
- 5-inch AMOLED with HD (1280x720px) resolution and Gorilla Glass 3
- Quad-core 1.3GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 212 processor
- 1GB RAM
- 16GB onboard storage (plus microSD card support up to 200GB)
- 8MP rear camera with autofocus, LED flash and 720p video recording at 30fps
- 5MP front-facing camera with continous autofocus, "video light" and 720p video at 30fps
- Bluetooth 4.1
- Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n with support for Wi-Fi calling
- 4G LTE connectivity (bands 1, 3, 7, 8 and 20)
- NFC support
- microUSB 2.0 with Type B connector
- Removable 2000mAh battery
- 142 x 71 x 6.9mm; 122g
We’re currently testing the Lumia 650 ahead of our full review, but in the meantime, you can find out more about it in these recent articles:
- Lumia 650 unboxing and first impressions
- Lumia 650 second impressions: an affordable flagship?
- Lumia 550 vs Lumia 650: budget showdown
- Lumia 640 vs Lumia 650: is it worth the upgrade?
Source: Carphone Warehouse