Nokia has added two new cellphones to its Lumia range: the budget-friendly Lumia 820 and flagship Lumia 920 – the latter handset boasting enough new features that, on paper at least, looks like it could be one of the most exciting Windows phones to be unveiled thus far.
Stylistically, the Lumia 920 retains the same bold look of its predecessor, the Lumia 900, and is available in yellow, red, white, grey, and black. The handset measures 70.8 x 130.3 x 10.7 mm (2.7 x 5.1 x 0.4 inches) and weighs 185 g (6.5 oz). It sports a 332 pixels-per-inch (PPI) 4.5-inch PureMotion HD+ curved glass display, which just bests the iPhone 4/S’s famed 326 PPI.
The Lumia 920's rear-facing Nokia PureView camera isn't the same 41-megapixel monster we previously reported on, but features a Carl Zeiss Tessar lens with a resolution of 8.7 megapixels and Optical Image Stabilization, which is a piece of hardware that essentially "floats" the lens to cut down on shaky shots. The main camera is also capable of 1080p video recording, while a lower-quality camera resides on the front of the device to enable video calling.
Under the hood
Taking a look at the Lumia 920's hardware specifications, the phone packs a dual-core 1.5 Ghz Qualcomm S4 Snapdragon processor and 1 GB RAM, with 32 GB internal storage. The headline-grabber however, is the addition of support for wireless charging to both new Lumia models, in the form of the Qi Wireless charging standard. Aside from officially branded wireless chargers, the adoption of Qi could potentially allow the phones to dock with a variety of new wireless charging gizmos, though it's not yet clear if this will be the case.
When not charging, power to the Lumia 920 is provided by a 2,000 mAh battery, which Nokia rates as good for up to 67 hours of music playback or 10 hours of 3G talk time. Naturally, these figures should be taken with a dose of skepticism until we've had hands-on in order to put them to the test.
Software
The Lumia 920 comes running Windows Phone 8 and is integrated into Microsoft's ecosystem, with Office included. It also features support for the cloud-storage SkyDrive service and Nokia's own Nokia Music, both of which combine to help make the current sole option of 32 GB storage go further.
Nokia Maps additionally makes an appearance and includes offline storage, turn-by-turn navigation and Nokia City Lens: a feature which involves the user holding up the phone in order to view an augmented-reality display of what the immediate area has to offer.
Time to switch?
While the Lumia 920 should be a natural upgrade for existing Windows Phone users, Nokia and Microsoft face an uphill battle to convince users of Android, iOS and BlackBerry to make the switch to another ecosystem this late in the game – a fact tacitly acknowledged even in Nokia’s own promotional material, titled “It’s time to switch." Whether or not the pairing of Lumia 920 and Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 is good enough to compel the public to make that leap remains to be seen.
The pricing and availability of the Lumia 920 are to be announced in the coming months. The promo video below highlights some of the phone's main features.
Source: Nokia
