Nokia Unveils Lumia 920 and 820 Smartphones, Believes Them to be Most Innovative on the Market

Nokia announced the next generation of its smartphones today, the high-end Nokia Lumia 920 and the mid-range Lumia 820, both of which feature beautiful design with bright colors to choose from, a 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 processor, and the Windows Phone 8 operating system.

The 920 boasts a huge 4.5-inch display and an 8.7MP Nokia PureView camera with a Carl Zeiss Tessar lens, which is equipped with two-stage autofocus, LED flash, and serious optical stabilization. (The 820’s camera is nearly as strong, but lacks the optical stabilization feature.) For video, they can both shoot in 1920x1080 HD at 30fps. The camera is a major selling point of the devices, and they purport to offer unparalleled performance in low-light environments and shaky situations.


As far as ports go, both the 920 and 820 have micro-USB charging and data connectors, 3.5mm audio jacks, and micro-USB 2.0. For communication, both phones have WiFi 802.11a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.1, and NFC capabilities, and they both offer 1GB of internal memory with another 32GB available via a memory card and 7GB of cloud storage in SkyDrive.

The specs list for both indicate that Microsoft Office applications including Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and One Note are on board, and the default browser is Internet Explorer 10. You can also stream as much music as you want, for free, from Nokia Music’s library.


GPS capabilities are also baked in, and navigation tools include Nokia Maps, Nokia Drive, Nokia City Lens (an augmented reality view of the areas around you when viewed through the device’s camera), Nokia Transport, Offline map support, and turn-by-turn voice navigation.

The new Lumia devices also support Qi charging, which lets you charge the devices simply by placing them on their charging plates, or wirelessly with a Wireless Shell accessory.


Nokia has bet big on these phones and Windows Phone 8; it remains to be seen if the gamble will pay off, but these devices look terrific, and Nokia looks a lot smarter for hitching its wagon to Windows Phone today than it did a year ago.