Nokia has officially unveiled its new budget Windows Phone 8 (WP8) handset, the Lumia 525, following weeks of rumors and speculation.

The smartphone market is evolving at a rapid pace and there are now more choices than ever to suit every style and budget. Nokia has already catered to the high-end segment of the market with its Lumia 1020 and Lumia 1520 smartphones, among others, and now it's time to give the budget segment another option.

The Nokia Lumia 525 will launch as a mid-range smartphone boasting 1GB of RAM, double than what other budget Lumia smartphones are offering. The Lumia 520, Lumia 620 and Lumia 625 all offer just 525MB of RAM. Otherwise, the Lumia 525 is virtually identical to the Lumia 520 in terms of specs.

Nokia's new budget smartphone, the Lumia 525, sports a 4-inch WVGA IPS LCD display with a modest resolution of 400 x 800 and a pixel density of 235 pixels per inch (ppi). It packs a dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor clocked at 1GHz, 1GB of RAM, and 8GB of internal storage capacity, expandable up to 64GB via microSD.

Other specs include a 5-megapixel rear camera with no flash, but with neat features such as Nokia Smart Camera Cinegraphic lens, Panorama lens, and Bing vision. It also offers a number of image tweaking options such as landscape orientation, touch to focus, geo-tagging, and auto or manual exposure. The handset does not have a front-facing camera.

The Nokia Lumia 525 packs a 1,430 mAh battery that should deliver up to 17 hours of talk time and up to 336 hours of standby time. It runs Windows Phone 8 with the Lumia Black update and, as expected with Lumia smartphones, it comes with 7GB of SkyDrive cloud storage. In terms of connectivity, the handset supports Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, A-GPS, A-GLONASS and 3G. The smartphone also comes with popular Nokia location and navigation apps, including HERE Drive, HERE Maps, and HERE Transit.

According to Nokia's official listing for the new Lumia 525, the initial launch will include three regions: Africa, Asia Pacific and Middle East. Nokia did not provide any specific launch date or pricing details so far, nor did it say whether the smartphone will become available in other markets at a later date. We'll keep you up to date as soon as more information becomes available.