Nokia Lumia 920 and 820 announced

It's been a long time posting, but Nokia announced it's new Lumia phones in NewYork last Wednesday and they're worthy of a post!

The new Lumia phones, 920 and 820 are the successors of the current models Lumia 900 and Lumia 800 (which I have). While the old models will not be upgradable but to Windows Phone 7.8, the new models will run Windows Phone 8 that brings a whole lot new features to the table and better integration with Windows 8, also released later this year. Windows Phone 8 enables the new technical features both the Lumia 920 and 820 have.

Lumia 920

Lumia 920 is definitely the new flagship phone of Nokia. It has big 4'5" screen with a lot of exciting and innovative technology, such as doubled refresh rate, super high resolution (tops the retina display of iPhone 4s), NFC and most interestingly super sensitivity that enables you to use the phone even with your gloves on! This will be great especially in winter time, one thing I cried about in my earlier blog post. Lumia 920 also features wireless charging, which sounds awesome, something I didn't expect to see in mass products for some time.

To me personally, one of the greatest improvement of Lumia 920 is the Pureview technology they're bringing in. A floating lens enables Optical Image Stabilizaion (OIS) which should allow blur-free photos in low light conditions and stabilized videos instead of shaky ones. Some of the demos from the announcement event were really impressive and promising. I like low light photography and that's basically what the coming Finnish winter has to offer anyway =)

Lumia 920 comes in bright and vibrant colors red and yellow (in addition to white, black and gray) which makes the classic Lumia design look even more tempting. I'm really looking forward on getting hands on time with this phone! You can read more about Lumia 920 on Nokia's website.

Lumia 820

Lumia 820 is a classified as mid-range phone, although by it's specs it's not a far cry from Lumia 920 and certainly it's much more powerful and fuller of new features than the current flagship phone Lumia 900! It even has removable battery and micro-SD card that some people would've liked to see in Lumia 920 as well. Where 820 lacks the most in my opinion is the design. It differs oddly from the award-winning design of the Lumia 800 and 900. Also the screen resolution is only 800x480 which is the same as with Windows Phone 7.x.

Of course, some compromises have to be done with the mid-range phones. Still, the phone has large 4'3" screen and many of the cool stuff of the Lumia 920, like wireless charging and NFC. More about Lumia 820 on Nokia's website.

Availability, price?

The new Lumia products are very cool, but the event that went down in New York could've gone better. For instance, I couldn't see the official Nokia stream until halfway into the show. Also the people who where on stage seemed lacking enthusiasm and perhaps missed some rehearsals.. Such important events for Nokia deserve a much better execution. And why didn't CEO Elop speak more? He's great on stage! And then there's the "scandal", certainly a PR nightmare, that arose when their sample video of the OIS system proved to be misleading if not totally deceitful and faked.. But the worst of all, they didn't announce any information about the pricing or availability except "Q4 in select markets". I can't believe Nokia is still doing it this way, which is killing-the-hype-and-letting-competitors-sell-the-phones -way. I met Mr Elop at the Nokia AGM last spring and the only thing I complained about to him was the huge gap between announcing a phone and getting it to the market shelves. It's really frustrating they have not managed to fix this and I am afraid it will come with a heavy price to Nokia.

All I can hope now is that they'll bring these new superb new phones on the market fast! Surely before the holiday season. And I hope this time homeland of Nokia, Finland, won't have to wait until next year.

Update:

Just as I got this post out, rumours started to appear on the web that these phones would be shipping mid-to-late November, perhaps even earlier in Europe. I hope this is true so it would hit the markets just in time for the Christmas shoppers!

Secondly, Nokia apologized the OIS video mess, then stepped up and took The Verge outdoors for a real photo session with Lumia 920 with Pureview and some competing smartphone flagships like iPhone 4S and Samsung Galaxy III to see how much Nokia's OIS improves the image quality in low light conditions.