Nokia gets a new cut price Windows Phone rival

The Gadget Show  Thursday 11 October 2012

The Nokia Lumia 710 was cruelly overlooked by many as one of the finest smartphones of the year: for £99 you simply couldn’t buy a blower with a higher IQ. But now it seems Nokia has some competition when it comes to cut price Windows Phones: French phone peddler Alcatel is getting in on the action.

This week, a Chinese site published images of what appears to be an Alcatel smartphone running Windows Phone, with straight lines and a bright back casing. Specs include a four inch screen and 1GHz processor, plus a five megapixel camera.

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That would be a first from the company, which makes most of its money selling tech to mobile networks, but also has a sideline in selling feature phones and Android smartphones. Crucially, they’re always cheaper than chips, suggesting an Alcatel Windows Phone could be too – the site floats a price of around £160 unlocked, which could drop even lower if sold through a network on pay as you go.

Before you break open the piggy bank though, do be aware: this phone appears to be running Windows Phone 7.5 at the moment, and will supposedly run 7.8 on launch. That’s slightly different to the new Windows Phone 8: you get the same new tile screen which you can customise to your heart’s content, but you can’t run any new Windows 8 apps on them.

Is that a price worth (not) paying? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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