The HSN (Home Shopping Network) is offering the Nokia Lumia 521 for $99.95, reduced from the standard price of $150.31. What's more with a special coupon code (135235), entered at the review stage at checkout, that price can be further reduced to just $79.95 (£53). That $80 price point is easily the lowest price we've seen for a Windows Phone 8 handset in the US.

The price is for an contract free (unsubsidised) Lumia 521, although the handset will still be locked to T-Mobile. Once purchased the handset must be activated within 60 days, so there is an obligation, albeit one that is less onerous than the typical smartphone contract. The handset can be paired with select pre-paid plans or a month to month contract plans starting at $50 (unlimited talk and text, 500MB data). 

The Lumia 521 is a T-Mobile specific variant of the Lumia 520, with support for the WCDMA 1700 (Band IV) and 1900 (Band II) frequencies. Other specifications include a 4.0 inch WVGA (800 x 480) TFT screen, 8GB of internal memory, microSD card support, a dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor running at 1GHz, and a 5 megapixel camera. 

We've previously noted that Windows Phone is arguably stronger at the low end of the market than at the high end of the market, when making a comparison of the relative experiences between competing platforms:

In the low end of the smartphone market the situation is a little different. All devices, by price point necessity, have lower specifications, fewer features, and lower-cost materials. iOS devices are not available, even when opting for previous generation models. Android devices are numerous, and comfortably qualify as the cheapest smartphones available, but can feel under-powered and generally have the biggest cut back on both features, specifications and software experience. Blackberry devices are available, but are running the previous generation of the platform, which has now been superseded by BlackBerry 10. Windows Phone, in the form of the Nokia Lumia 520 / 521, has some of the same hardware cuts as the other devices (e.g. lower quality screen, slower processor, less RAM), but the important point is that these cuts seem to have less of an impact than on other platforms, with the Windows Phone 8 software experience being much the same as it is on higher end devices.

Of course there remains a subjective element in any assessment of which smartphone is "best" and any judgement criteria will vary from person to person. Nonetheless, we think Windows Phone, in a comparison with other mobile platform, has a stronger competitive position in the low end than at the high-end. This is best personified by the Nokia Lumia 520, which The Register, in a recent review, aptly described as a credible "alternative to Landfill Android", but can also be applied to the Nokia Lumia 620, and, to a lesser extent the Nokia Lumia 720.

The Nokia Lumia 521 at a sub-$100 price point can only reinforce this sense of value for money, especially when taking into account the software experience. Although it is possible to find cheaper Android smartphones (down to around $30) such handsets generally make the greatest compromises on both the hardware and software experience side.