Nokia has announced the Lumia 525, a budget smartphone that succeeds the extremely popular model Lumia 520.

The new handset, which was unveiled in Singapore on Wednesday, looks similar to its predecessor. It will go on sale in Singapore from 14 December for a price of SG$249 (£123). Nokia is yet to offer any details about the phone's launch in oher regions including the UK.

Specifications

The handset uses a 1 GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. The key difference from the preceding best-selling model will be the 1GB of RAM in Lumia 525, which is much higher than the 512MB of RAM available on Lumia 520.

Lumia 525 retains the same 4-inch touch screen (resolution of 800x480) that was featured on Lumia 520. It even utilises the same 5MP camera that supports HD video recording at 720p and 30 frames per second.

While there is only 8GB of internal memory, users can also use microSD cards to expand storage up to 64GB. Users of the handset will also be entitled to 7GB of free storage on SkyDrive, Nokia added.

How is it different from Lumia 520?

As mentioned earlier, the phone has 1GB of RAM instead of 512MB. The older Lumia 520 was not fast enough to support certain apps and games since they had a system requirement of at least 1GB of RAM. The latest Lumia 525 solves that issue by dishing out higher RAM. Apart from this, there is very little that has changed inside the phone, as well as outside of it.

Like its predecessor, Lumia 525 comes in several colours with the option to swap, thanks to a removable shell.

Availability

Lumia 520 has been the top-selling Windows Phone worldwide since its launch. Its successor looks like it has all the ingredients to carry on that legacy. The handset will most probably not be launched in the US, but will arrive soon in a host of other countries throughout the Middle East, Asia Pacific and Africa. The Lumia 525 will be promoted heavily in Asian markets where the older Lumia 520 performed extremely well in the past.

Nokia