Nokia has officially announced the Lumia 610 NFC, the world's first Windows Phone with NFC hardware support. However other hardware features of the phone resembles that of standard Lumia 610.

Nokia Lumia 610 NFC

Looking at the specs in general , the Lumia 610 NFC measures 119 x 62 x 12mm, weighs 135g, and features a 3.7in LCD screen with a resolution of 480 x 800 pixels.

It comes with 8GB of internal storage, 256MB of RAM, HSDPA 7.2 Mbps support, HSUPA 5.76 Mbps support, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1, a 5 megapixel camera with 720p video recording capability and runs Windows Phone 7.5 Mango. All this is powered by an 800MHz processor and a standard Li-Ion 1300 mAh battery, which promises talk time up to 9 hours 30 minutes and standby time of up to 720 hours.

Orange will be the first operator to bring the new Nokia Lumia 610 NFC to the market. Moreover the Lumia 610 model is the most affordable model in the Lumia range and with NFC attached to it, Nokia plans to reach wider younger audience in near future. The phone can pair with NFC accessories and read NFC tags with a single tap.

The new phone has been certified for contactless payments both with MasterCard for their PayPass solution and Visa payWave at the point of sale.

Nokia saw its share price dive by 14 percent this week after it announced it was expecting worse than predicted financial results for the first quarter of 2012. Making the annoucnement it revealed it had sold 2m Lumia smartphones in the first three months of 2012.

Nokia launched the 4.7in Lumia 900 in the US last weekend to lukewarm reviews, as well ashaving to defend a software bug which saw the phones data connection drop withouth warning. The Lumia 900 is set to launch in the UK on 27 April.

Here is a look at an exclusive video of Nokia Lumia 610 NFC.

Microsoft