Windows Phone platform has one thing not going its way, compared to Android, it's proprietary, and even if in a small way, works to step up manufacturing costs, that make sub-$200 smartphones running it a difficult, if not impossible proposition. That's until some low-cost smartphone maker strikes the right balance. Enter the Huawei W2, which just started selling in China, at the equivalent of US $163, or 999 RMB, contract free.

　　Pictured above, the Huawei W2 is far from falling apart at the seams, and offers a pretty decent feature-set. Its 4.3-inch display beams out WVGA (800 x 480 pixels) resolution. Its only camera is a 5-megapixel shooter. Under its hood is a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 MSM8230 SoC (dual-core Krait CPU at 1.40 GHz, Adreno 305 GPU), which is wired to 1 GB of RAM, and 8 GB of storage, expandable by micro-SDHC. Its soft-modem is tuned for China's TS-CDMA networks. Windows Phone 8 is at the helm. The next cheapest Windows Phone handset has to be the Lumia 520 from Nokia, at the equivalent of $180.