By Stephen Schenck

When Nokia designed its Lumia 610, the name of the game was keeping costs down. As a result, the manufacturer managed to come up with a Windows Phone handset that sells, brand-new and fully-unlocked, in the mid-$200s range. While getting the price that low involved some trade-offs, Nokia’s ended up with a handset that lets it reach a whole new subset of the market. Apparently this is only the start of things, as Nokia has revealed plans to keep pushing the envelope even further, and eventually come out with a model that manages to beat even the 610 on price.

Nokia’s a bit tight-lipped about just how it might manage to release a smartphone that’s even less expensive than the 610, but it says that employees have worked out “ways to go even further than we anticipated” in keeping costs down.

We’d love to share Nokia’s enthusiasm, but when we think about common ways to continue to reduce manufacturing costs, we’re not sure we like where that leads. Sacrificing RAM has already caused a number of app-related headaches, and considering how little an extra 256MB runs for nowadays, it’s questionable if the money saved was a smart sacrifice.

Maybe Nokia really does have some really innovative ways to get prices down without making untenable compromises in quality; we love being surprised, and could be willing to give Nokia the benefit of the doubt. We just hope it carefully weighs the consequences of its choices, and doesn’t end up releasing a model that only serves to make the company look bad.

Source: The Verge