Nokia made a big splash last year with its Lumia devices. Bright colors and a distinct curved shape along with a sharp screen made for a truly unique set of phones. Unfortunately, the intriguing form factor wasn’t enough to overcome some serious hardware limitations imposed by Windows Phone 7. Yesterday, Nokia unveiled the updated Lumia line for Windows Phone 8. Everything that made the original Lumia phones so interesting is still there, but now it’s backed up by some serious tech.
The Lumia 820 and 920 run on a 1.5 GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor, the same chip behind the impressive performance of the Samsung Galaxy S III. The most obvious difference between the two models is the screen. Nokia’s mid-range 820 will sport a 4.3″ ClearBack AMOLED screen, while the 920 has an even more impressive 4.5″ Nokia PureMotion HD Plus display. Both displays are stunning, but Nokia is stretching things a bit to call the 920’s screen “better than HD” when it’s just a few pixels wider than 720p (1,280 x 768 pixels instead of 1,280 x 720). Both touch screens use Super Sensitive Touch panels, which make it possible to use the phones while wearing gloves. The 920 also has 32 GB of internal storage to the 820’s 8 GB, but the 820 does have a microSD card slot if you need more.
Other updates to the Lumia? Nokia Maps now offers a downloadable map function. You could, for example, download a map of New York state to your phone and get turn-by-turn directions offline. City Lens allows users to hold the phone up and get information on businesses in the area. The home screen, which in Windows Phone 7 supported two panel sizes, now supports three. You can also manipulate the tile sizes, such as making a CNN tile that’s a rectangle quickly shrink to a square as the screen is rearranged.
A lot of thought was put into the cameras on the new Lumia devices. Both sport 8 MP sensors, and the 920 adds a floating lens that keeps the camera remarkably steady. During the announcement, a Nokia representative tapped the phone while shooting video on the camera and the video looked like it had been shot with a tripod; shaky cell phone video has suddenly become an inexcusable relic of the past. The added stability allows the Lumia 920 to shoot pictures at a higher aperture without blurring, resulting in pictures taken in low lighting that are stunningly colorful, even without the harsh glare from an LED flash.
Nokia is also betting big on the future of wireless charging with these phones. The 920 includes built-in support for Qi inductive charging, and the same feature can be added to the 820 by swapping back-plates. Yesterday’s announcement included an interesting variety of chargers taking advantage of this feature. There were two simple charging bases, one with a built-in programmable NFC tag, a quirky pillow charger from Fatboy, and a JBL bluetooth stereo speaker, with an NFC tag that launches the phone’s music player as soon as you lay the phone on top of the speaker. JBL also offers a more portable speaker that includes the NFC pairing, but leaves out the inductive charging.
This year may be Nokia’s last chance to revive its plummeting market share in global smartphone sales, and Microsoft needs some impressive flagship devices if it expects Windows Phone 8 to make a stronger showing than Windows Phone 7 did. Nokia did a great job showcasing the cool yesterday, but now the company has to convince buyers. With the Lumia 820 and 920, both companies can expect to be far more competitive in the mobile world than they have been in a long time.
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