Nokia Lumia 920 launches
Nokia's flagship Windows Phone 8 handset packs PureView camera tech, wireless charging and a touchscreen you can use while wearing gloves
The Nokia Lumia 920 – the Finnish company’s first Windows Phone 8 handset – has been unveiled at an event in New York.
Packing in PureView camera tech, NFC and wireless charging, the Lumia 920 is wrapped up in a polycarbonate shell – available in Nokia’s traditional retina-searing array of colours including slate grey, lipstick red and vivid yellow.
Round the front, the Lumia packs a 4.5in ClearBlack curved HD screen. Nokia claims that it delivers 2.5x faster pixel transition speeds, higher than 720p resolution and is 25 per cent brighter than its closest rival. It also features super-sensitive touchscreen tech that lets you use the screen even through gloves – handy, with winter on the way.
Inside, a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 1.5GHz dual-core processor provides the grunt. Nokia claims that it’ll give you 30% more battery life than the quad-core equivalent.
The PureView camera itself isn’t the full-fledged 41MP snapper seen in the Nokia 808 PureView – instead, Nokia’s widened the scope of its PureView brand to include an 8.7MP, f2.0 camera backed up with object image stabilisation using floating lens technology – Nokia claims that it’ll capture between 5 and 10 times the light of other smartphone cameras, eliminating motion blur in low-light pictures. Round the front, there’s also a 1.3MP camera for video calls.
Equally exciting is the news that the Lumia 920 will feature built-in wireless charging out of the box – simply pop the phone on the rather bright FatBoy Recharging pillow and its 2000mAh battery will refresh itself without wrapping itself up in a tangle of wires.
Software-wise, you get fully-featured offline Nokia Maps, including indoor maps – bye bye, GPS – while Nokia Drive now includes a Commute feature that works out what time you need to leave your house based on traffic patterns. AR app Nokia City Lens overlays location-based info on your phone display, including restaurant reviews and points of interest.
A Lenses button links to Lens apps that are integrated with your camera – so Bing Vision recognises objects, Google Goggles style, while Smart Shoot Lens – based on the Scalado tech that Nokia recently bought up – eliminates moving objects from photos by taking several pics and removing moving elements from photos. The Cinemagraph Lens adds motion to still pictures, effectively turning them into looping GIFs by painting in moving elements from a video to a still frame.
Although Microsoft and Nokia’s flagship Windows Phone 8 handset is undeniably impressive, it’s worth keeping an eye on the array of new mobiles set to be unveiled in the next week or so – with the Motorola Droid RAZR HD, HTC Windows Phone 8 mobiles and the Apple iPhone 5 coming up, anyone in the market for a new handset would do well to keep their wallet in their pocket for the time being.
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