Last week, Microsoft quietly introduced significant price cuts for its Lumia 550, and its metal-bodied version, the Lumia 650, in the UK and Ireland.

You can pick up a 650 now costs just £119.99 SIM-free via the Microsoft Store in the UK, which is down from £159.99 when it first launched five months ago. If you want to buy as part of a package you can pick them up even cheaper.

Carphone Warehouse is offering the Lumia 650 for just £99.99 when purchased with a £10 pay-as-you-go (PAYG) SIM pack on EE, which includes 150 minutes of cross-network talktime, unlimited texts and 500MB of 4G data for 30 days.

It is strange really. The phone was launched with practically no publicity and yet got some great reviews and works well with Windows 10. Microsoft seemed to have sabotaged the phone out of the gate by releasing it with Qualcomm’s lowest powered 2xx chipset. The phone had a Snapdragon 212 (210v2) which had been tainted by the 210’s awful reputation. In fact the 212 was not a bad chipset, but the perception was that it was rubbish.

The phone had minor problems with power management, but nothing particularly terminal. One of the problems was the £199 price tag when it first came out, but those who reviewed it mostly said it was worth the cash. With this new price tag it is probably really a bargain. Particularly if you want to give Android the shove.