Lenovo release Windows phone

Four years after the announcement

Lenovo has finally released a Windows phone almost four years after it was announced and two years late.

We were first told that Lenovo had signed up to produce a Windows Phone in November 2011, a Lenovo executive said it would be in the shops in the second half of 2012. Nothing more was ever mentioned about it until until February 2014, when Microsoft announced that Lenovo was among nine new partners that had signed up to launch Windows Phone devices.

Then Lenovo executive said its first Windows phone would arrive in 2014, but with the regularity of a London Night Bus, it didn’t show up.

When Microsoft announced its Windows 10 launch plans last March, it again said that Lenovo was on board and they would be “available in mid-year 2015 via China Mobile.” Yeah that didn’t happen either and by that point we were expecting it to be another Duke Nukem.

This time Lenovo pointed out that Microsoft’s cross-platform software efforts had made Windows phones less relevant so we never expected to see one.

Imagine our surprise when Lenovo confirmed it is finally launching its first Windows phone, although it might not be called that. The phone will carry Lenovo’s logo but it will be marketed under the name of a Japanese carrier that will exclusively offer it.

It has the rather sexy name of ‘SoftBank 503LV’ which we guess sounded better in the original Japanese or the Goddot phone, which is what we would have called it. But it will be the first Windows 10 Mobile handset, and the first Lenovo device, offered by SoftBank, parent company of US carrier Sprint.

It has a design that features glass on both sides of the handset. It will have a 5-inch TFT LCD screen with HD (1280x720px) resolution, Octa-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 SoC, 3GB RAM, 32GB onboard storage (plus microSDXC card support up to 128GB), 8MP rear camera, 5MP front-facing camera, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.0, and a 2250mAh battery

The Snapdragon 617 processor means it will support the PC-like Continuum feature in Windows 10 Mobile. There’s no information available yet regarding pricing, but the business-focused handset will go on sale in October and this time we suspect it really will be.