Microsoft Store is offering a super deal on its Lumia 950 XL phone for holiday shoppers looking for a Christmas or Hanukkah gift. The smartphone is on sale for $299 for a limited time, while the discounted Lumia 950 is already sold out. Microsoft's smartphone sales have become meager including just 2.3 million units for fiscal year Q3 2016 so it is trying to boost sales of its Windows 10 handsets.
The company also ended its partnership with Nokia. Lumia 950 XL's price has been decreasing for a while and now its original price tag has been slashed $200 or about 40 percent.
Microsoft announced the Lumia 950 XL in October 2015 and it hit the market in November of that year.
The smart phone is cheaper than phones of its main rival companies. Its key features include 32 gigabytes of internal memory, 3 GB of RAM, and a 20-megapixel camera with triple-LED red-green-blue (RGB) flash, according to iTech Post.
The Lumia handset's dimensions are (5.98 x 3.09 x 0.32 in. (151.9 x 78.4 x 8.1 mm) and weighs 5.82 oz. (165 grams). It has a Nano-SIM.
Lumia 950 XL includes a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 chipset, Octa-core CPU, and Adreno 430 GPU. Its sensors include eye scanner, accelerometer, gyrometer, compass, and barometer.
Microsoft's smartphone also includes a 5.7-inch AMOLED display. It has a 1440-pixel x 2560-pixel resolution.
The 950 XL is selling fast like the out-of-stock 950 model. Holiday shoppers can enjoy the smartphone deal until Christmas Eve on December 24, Saturday.
Microsoft started changing its smartphone business last year. It announced in May 2016 it would cut 1,850 jobs in its hardware division, according to Windows Central. Almost three-quarters of the layoffs were at the tech company's Finland unit, and 500 job cuts were global.
Last year the Bill Gates co-founded company started a restructuring process. Microsoft announced a $7.6 billion write-down based on its purchase of Nokia's Devices and Services division, which resulted in its phone unit slashing 7,800 jobs.
The company is now focusing on small smartphone markets where it can offer unique products. Other Microsoft phones running Windows 10 include Lumia 650 and Lumia 550.
The first Lumia unit manufactured was the Nokia Lumia 800, which was released in November 2011 and ran Windows Phone 7.5.
Here's a review of Lumia 950 XL: