Nokia’s Lumia 920 and 820: How they look, work and feel

The new Nokia Lumia 920 (L) and 820 Windows smartphones are displayed during a joint event with Microsoft.

Nokia launched two smartphones yesterday — the Lumia 920 and the Lumia 820, both of which will run on Windows 8 OS. So what are the key features of the two smartphones? We take a quick look.

First, let’s look at the technical specifications of both smartphones.

      Wireless Charging Pillow by Fatboy

Nokia Lumia 920: This is, of course, Nokia’s flagship device. As far as technical specifications go, this has a curved 4.5-inch PureMotion HD+ screen. A dual-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 CPU with 1 GB RAM, 32 GB disk space and 7 GB storage in the cloud with SkyDrive for users.

Wireless Charging Plate

Nokia also promises a bigger 2,000mAh battery which is expected to last 10 hours with 3G. The Lumia 920 has NFC, integrated wireless charging and an 8.7 megapixel rear PureView camera with HD video. The phone also has “Super Sensitive Touch,” which will let users handle their smartphone even while wearing gloves. 

Nokia Lumia 820 : This is the less pricier version. The smartphone has polycarbonate unibody with a 4.3 inch screen. It is also NFC enabled with an 8 megapixel PureView branded camera. This smartphone will also support wireless charging. The 1GB RAM and dual-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 processor will ensure that there is little lag. It has 8GB space (expandable upto 32 GB) and 7 GB in SkyDrive.

Tech specifications aside here are a few new features of the Windows 8-Nokia Lumia smartphones:

Augmented reality with Nokia’s City Lens app: This means that users can now point their Lumia smartphone cameras to restaurants, hotels, etc to find out reviews about the place.

JBL speakers with wireless power-charging: Nokia has teamed up with JBL to produce special speakers that can be used to wirelessly charge the Lumia smartphones. Users can also play music from the phone, using NFC. You’ll have to buy this separately.

The new Nokia Lumia 920 charges on a JBL speaker. Getty Images

Wireless charging: This is Nokia’s biggest innovation as far as smartphones go. The wireless chargers come in all shapes, sizes and colours. They’re all Qi-compatible, which means users can choose any wireless charger. The three kinds of chargers available are: Wireless Charging Plate, Wireless Charging Pillow by Fatboy and Wireless Charging Stand. According to the official site, none of the wireless charging devices will be included in the sales package. Users will probably have to buy them separately.

Windows and the Tile system: The Lumia 920 and 820 are also major investments for Microsoft, which is probably why CEO Steve Ballmer and Joe Belfiore, manager of the Windows Phone Program were present at the launch. Belfiore pointed out how the new Windows 8 system for mobile could be easily personalised by users with the tile interface, which is definitely something new.

The most exciting bit is of course that Windows 8 finally has screenshots. Yay. The bad bit: users can’t upgrade Windows 7 phones nor will all apps written for Windows Phone 8 run on Windows 7. Lack of backward compatibility is a big downside.

The price and the shipping date of the smartphones has not been revealed as yet.

-Getty Images & FP