Microsoft India to Launch More 4G Phones Once 'Infrastructure Is Ready'

Technology giant Microsoft on Tuesday, at the launch of the Lumia 640 Dual SIM and Lumia 640 XL Dual SIM, announced it will launch launch more 4G-enabled devices in India once the infrastructure for the high speed mobile Internet service is ready in the country.

The company, which acquired Nokia's handset division last year for $7.2 billion, has only one 4G-compatible device, the Lumia 638, in the Indian market.

"There are a number of 4G-compatible devices in our portfolio, we are ready with the handsets. Once infrastructure is ready (in India), we will bring more 4G devices in," Microsoft Mobile Devices Director Marketing Raghuvesh Sarup told PTI.

Many devices makers are now launching 4G-enabled phones (especially in the sub-Rs 10,000 category) as operators like Reliance Jio gear up to launch the high-speed Internet service in the country.

Currently, Airtel and Aircel are the only two operators offering 4G services in certain parts of the country.

Lenovo's A6000 and A7000, Micromax's Yu Yureka and Xiaomi's Redmi Note 4G are some of the 4G-enabled smartphones that hit the Indian market in the sub-Rs. 10,000 segment recently.

The Lumia 640 Dual SIM and Lumia 640 XL Dual SIM were launched at Rs. 11,999 and Rs. 15,799 respectively. The phablets were first unveiled at MWC 2015 along with their single-SIM and 3G variants. The Redmond giant is additionally offering a one-year personal subscription to Office365 with the both the Lumia 640 Dual SIM and Lumia 640 XL Dual SIM. The free one year Office 365 personal subscription (worth Rs. 3,299) will enable full Office use on the Lumia handsets, and can also be used on one tablet and one PC/Mac. In addition to Office 365, Microsoft is also offering a subscription of 1TB of storage on OneDrive.

Much like other Lumia handsets, both the Lumia 640 Dual SIM and Lumia 640 XL Dual SIM feature Microsoft popular features and apps such as Cortana, Skype, Office, Outlook, and OneDrive. They will also be in line to receive the Windows 10 update later this year.

Both the Lumia 640 Dual SIM and Lumia 640 XL Dual SIM run Windows Phone 8.1 with Lumia Denim update out-of-the-box. The handsets are powered by a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor clocked at 1.2GHz coupled with 1GB of RAM. The new Microsoft Lumias also pack an 8GB of built-in storage, which is expandable via microSD card (up to 128GB).

The Lumia 640 Dual SIM and Lumia 640 XL Dual SIM however feature several other differences in specifications. The Lumia 640 Dual SIM sports a 5-inch HD (720x1280 pixels) IPS LCD display with Corning Gorilla Glass 3; packs an 8-megapixel rear camera and a 0.9-megapixel front-facing camera. Meanwhile, the Lumia 640 XL Dual SIM features a large 5.7-inch HD (720x1280 pixels) IPS LCD display with Corning Gorilla Glass 3; sports a 13-megapixel rear camera with Zeiss optics and a 5-megapixel front camera. The Lumia 640 XL Dual SIM also packs a 3000mAh battery, while the Lumia 640 Dual SIM packs a 2500mAh battery.

Written with inputs from PTI