Microsoft Lumia 950 XL, 950 and 550 hands-on

Microsoft Lumia 550 hands-on

The Lumia 550 is the smallest of the trio and represents the value category. It follows the Lumia design guidelines by the letter, so there are no surprises here - it's a phone made of matte plastic and feature a piece of Gorilla Glass 3 protection for the display.

What's interesting though is the Lumia 550 is built around a 4.7" LCD screen of 720p resolution, which is a nice change for a budget phone.

Microsoft Lumia 550

The Lumia 550 internals are less impressive though - it's a Snapdragon 210 chip with a quad-core Cortex-A7 processor and 1GB of RAM.

The main camera is a 5MP AF snapper with a LED flash, while the front one is a 2MP tiny cam. Even though the camera is of lower resolution, Microsoft is still keeping the hardware shutter key, even for a rather affordable phone.

Microsoft Lumia 550

In hand, the Microsoft Lumia 550 feels like any of its budget-friendly predecessors. The handset sports a solidly built, swappable polycarbonate shell that will easily handle daily wear and tear.

The storage is 8GB, expandable via microSD card.

Windows 10 is in charge of operations, as usual, but there was no word on Windows 10 Continuum support, so either it won't offer it or we'll be checking it out for ourselves once the retail unit arrives at our office.

Microsoft Lumia 550

The battery unit of the Lumia 550 is rather modest at 2,100 mAh, but hopefully Microsoft has optimized the new Windows 10 enough for a balanced performance. It supports fast charging, but there is no wireless charging compatibility.