Three has announced that it will be selling the HTC’s mainstream Windows Phone 8 smartphone, the Windows Phone 8S for a mere £180 on PAYG with a compulsory £10 added on top - bringing the total outlay for a phone locked on Three to £190. The cheapest SIM Free Windows Phone 8S we’ve seen on the open market costs around £225 at Insight.

In comparison, Three sells the smartphone with 250MB data, 100 minutes, 5000 texts on a two year contract for £17 a month, that’s a total cost of ownership of £408. The HTC Windows Phone 8S was released three months ago and was the last major Windows Phone 8 handset to be unveiled. The others, Nokia’s Lumia 820 and 920 as well as the Samsung Galaxy Ativ S being revealed weeks earlier.

That said, HTC’s smartphone is by far the cheapest Windows Phone 8 device on the market with a dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon system-on-chip clocked at 1GHz, 512MB of RAM, 4GB onboard storage (and a microSD card slot), a 4in 800x480 pixels display, a 5-megapixel rear camera, Beats Audio technology and a blue colour scheme that’s quite distinctive.

The Windows Phone 8S has a rated battery life of 600 minutes, weighs 113g and is a mere 10.3mm thick.