The affordable Microsoft Lumia 650 goes on sale in the US

Microsoft's Lumia 650 has officially landed in the US. The unlocked flavour of the Microsoft Lumia 650 is priced at $199 and can be purchased from the Microsoft Store with free shipping included.

The Microsoft Lumia 650 was unveiled all the way back in mid-February, and has been released in various emerging markets across the globe for some while now. In the US, however, Microsoft took its sweet time with launching its new affordable smartphone.

While the Lumia 650 is not going to impress anyone through its raw spec-sheet, the affordable handset left us with a pleasant first impression following a quick hands-on time. Major factors in this are the phone's thin and light construction as well as the metal frame that goes around the body of the handset.

The display of the Lumia 650 is a decent 5-inch AMOLED panel running at a resolution of 720 by 1280 pixels. The processing power is drawn from a Qualcomm Snapdragon 212 SoC with a 1.3GHz quad-core CPU and 1GB of RAM. That's not an impressive setup, but the phone is able to handle basic tasks well.

Other specs include 16GB of expandable internal storage, an 8MP primary camera, a 5MP secondary shooter on the front, 4G LTE, as well as a 2000mAh battery. Unfortunately, the Windows 10 Mobile 'Continuum' function is not supported by the phone.