The Nokia Lumia 521 from T-Mobile is already proving to be a popular Windows Phone 8 device, thanks to early sellouts on HSN and Walmart"s websites. The biggest reason is that the phone has a unsubsidized price of $129 on Walmart. For that amount of money you get a 4-inch smartphone with 512 MB of RAM, 8 GB of on-board storage, a five megapixel camera and support for 720p video.
The smartphone is still sold out on Walmart"s website, but on Saturday its retail stores will begin to sell the device again for the same price of $129. Microsoft Store locations will begin to sell the Nokia Lumia 521 for $149 on May 22. In the latest video from the Windows Phone team, one of the company"s evangelists, Ben Rudolph, and two other members of the team decided to go shopping to see what other kinds of smartphones could be bought for under $149, unsubsidized.
The final result was pretty much as expected. The phones the three men found while shopping for an hour are much older Android devices from Samsung and others and none of them come close to the kind of hardware features that the Nokia Lumia 521 has. It"s looking like both Microsoft and Nokia have come up with a Windows Phone 8 device that will be perfect for those folks who don"t want to be tied down to a two year contract.
Source: Windows Phone on YouTube