Nokia may unveil budget Windows Phone Lumia 510 in India on October 23

While all eyes are fixed on the Apple event slated for October 23 to be held in the US, an event in India aims to garner as much attention. Nokia India has released a teaser post on its official Facebook page. The post is a simple arithmetic problem, ‘610 – 100 = ?’ This could only mean one thing. The Lumia 510 will be showcased at the Nokia Diwali Gift to India event slated to take place on October 23 2012.

Leaked images and specifications of the Lumia 510 show that it is Nokia’s cheapest Lumia handset. The handset was first expected to make its debut in China, but it now appears that Nokia has a change of heart and may unveil the product in India, where the brand has a strong user base.

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A new Lumia coming soon to India

As for its specifications, this model is expected to feature a 4-inch display, have 4GB of internal memory, and run on just 256MB of RAM. This handset is targeted at the entry level market and designed to take on the budget Android smartphones. The introduction of this smartphone would be a good push for the Windows Phone platform as the cheapest Lumia model is the 610, and it costs a lot more than the budget offerings from other Android vendors. As per earlier reports, this handset is expected to feature a price tag of around $150. Taking the rate of the US dollar into perspective against the Indian rupee, we can expect the handset to be priced at approximately Rs 8,000 in India. However, the pricing remains to be seen as in the end it is how Nokia judge the value of the US Dollar against the Indian Rupee upon launch.

There is no word yet on the operating system the Lumia 510 handset will run on, but given its previous track record, Microsoft has managed to run Windows Phone 7.5 on handsets featuring 256MB of RAM. So this could be the OS used on this yet unannounced entry level smartphone.

When Microsoft announced Windows Phone 8 (WP 8), the brand also announced WP 7.8 which is a sort of ‘value pack’, for existing Windows Phone devices and not WP 8. All handsets running WP 7.5 or Mango will be upgradeable to WP 7.8, and one of the new features that the update brings with it is the new customisable home screen from WP 8.

In an interview with The Verge, Greg Sullivan explains this decision, “The nature of the investment [in Windows Phone 8] is primarily in areas that are not exploitable by existing hardware. To do the work to bring all of those elements to a platform that can’t exploit them wasn’t necessarily the most efficient use of resource.”

While we understand that WP 8 is a completely different beast altogether, it’s surprising that Microsoft couldn’t optimise it for single-core handsets. Perhaps it was the amount of RAM, and not an issue with the CPU, or that someone will manage to strip it down and port it over to older handsets. Not everyone cares about dual-core on their phones, NFC and all that jazz, so for them, the WP 7.8 update is more than welcome. “When you pull that Lumia out of your pocket after you’ve received that 7.8 update, it will look and feel the same as a Windows Phone 8 device,” said Sullivan. This should keep many WP 7 users happy for the time being, until they decide whether or not they need to take the WP 8 plunge.