Microsoft launches Lumia 650 mid-range Windows 10 smartphone

Microsoft has announced a new Windows 10 smartphone for selected European markets. The Lumia 650 adds to the firm's latest smartphone range with a mid-range model, although with sales figures still low, the Lumia line could soon be replaced altogether.

The Microsoft Lumia 650 will be launching in Europe from February 18, in single- and dual-SIM models and with prices starting at around $199. It's a stylish 5-inch smartphone with an aluminum frame and a slim (6.9mm), lightweight (122g) build. It has a 16GB internal memory, which can be extended with a microSD card, and comes with the full range of Microsoft software, such as Office, Skype, OneDrive, etc. Microsoft is billing the Lumia 650 as a handset that's suitable for business users as well as consumers.

This latest Lumia joins the high-end Lumia 950 and 950 XL in Microsoft's line-up of Windows 10 handsets. Unveiled in autumn 2015, these 5.2-inch and 5.7-inch smartphones (1140×2560 pixels) run Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 and 810 processors with 3GB of RAM, and have 20-Megapixel main cameras loaded with a triple LED flash and an optical image stabilizer. They feature a USB Type-C connection and use new liquid cooling technology. At the other end of the range, the Lumia 550 is a 4.7-inch low-cost handset with lower-spec hardware and a budget price tag.

In addition to these native Windows 10 handsets, the Lumia range includes older models that can be upgraded from Windows Phone to Windows 10. However, the Lumia 650 could be one of the last Lumia smartphones Microsoft releases, as the firm is thought to have a new generation of "Surface Phone" handsets in the pipeline, designed for improved integration with Windows 10 Mobile, like the firm's Surface tablets.

Data from Kantar shows that Windows smartphones only accounted for 7.2 per cent of handset sales in Western Europe in Q4 2015. The situation proved even worse in the USA, where the Lumia range bagged 1.6 per cent of smartphone sales over the same period. Across all hardware devices (PCs, smartphones and tablets), Microsoft has already notched up over 200 million Windows 10 users worldwide in just over six months since the OS officially launched.

The Windows Store now has almost 670,000 applications available for users of the platform.

Virtual reality set to transform filmmaking

Chris Milk stepped onto a TED Conference stage and took the audience on an awe-inducing trip into the future of movies. While much of the early attention on virtual reality has focused on use of the immersive technology in video games, Milk and his US startup Vrse are using it to transform storytelling and filmgoing. "We have just started to scratch the surface of the true power of virtual reality," Milk said. "It's not a video game peripheral. It connects humans to other humans in a profound way... I think virtual reality has the potential to actually change the world." He had everyone in the Vancouver audience at TED , which ended Friday, hold Google Cardboard viewers to their eyes for what was billed as the world's collective virtual reality experience. Google Cardboard gear is literally that -- cardboard

Explained: Camera Improvements in the New HTC 10

With the HTC 10, the Taiwanese company is promising to undo the past wrongs in the cameras of its previous flagship phones. The camera has long a weak point in HTC devices. At first, HTC sacrificed image resolution in the M8 and made the size of individual pixels larger to capture more light (what HTC called Ultrapixel). But the resulting 4 megapixel images were often fuzzy, especially when cropped or enlarged. To fix the issue, in its next flagship - the M9 - HTC went with smaller individual pixels in a 20-megapixel camera last year, but it still underperformed in extreme situations, such as indoors and close-ups. In the HTC 10, the company attempts to strike a balance with larger individual pixels (1.55µm), but not as large as before and a 12 megapixel sensor in its camera coupled with a ƒ/1.8 lens. HTC accepts that in the imaging performance in the M9 was not up to the kind of spec of what they really like to see in a flagship. HTC is giving a slight boost to the selfi...

Freedom 251: 30,000 Units Sold, Components for Up to 2.5 Million Will Be Imported

Ringing Bells, the makers of the Rs. 251 smartphone - the Freedom 251 - confirmed to Gadgets 360 on Tuesday that it has still only accepted payments for 30,000 units of the phone. It also added that the components for these phones will be imported, and only assembled in India, not made here. Ringing Bells stopped accepting orders on February 19, and claims to have received over 70 million registrations. The company President and Director both repeatedly stated that the price of the phone would be made possible through economies of scale, and making the phone in India to cut out import costs. Economies of scale? However, in a discussion with Gadgets 360 the company revealed that it had only sold 30,000 units of the phone on day one. The company has now confirmed that it has not sent out the payment emails to anyone else who registered - "we were working out details of cash on delivery, which we are announcing now, so we will be sending emails to the first 2.5...

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