Nokia is expanding the Lumia experience - here's how

Nokia has presented to Mobile World Congress 2012 two new Lumia Devices, the Lumia 610 & the Lumia 900.

The Lumia 610 is a Windows Phone Tango (low cost) device. If you compare it to the Lumia 710 you will see a lot of similarities, they both have:

• 8GB Storage
  
• 480 x 800 pixels, 3.7 inches (~252 ppi pixel density)
  
• TFT capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
  
• Corning Gorilla Glass
  
• 5 MP, 2592х1944 pixels, autofocus, LED flash
  
• Standard battery, Li-Ion 1300 mAh (BP-3L) user replaceable
  
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
  
• Bluetooth v2.1 with A2DP, EDR

The above is a good set of quality components, I'm especially happy the 8GB Storage has been retained by Nokia, unlike a competitor who thinks 4GB Storage is enough for a "Windows Phone Experience". So, what has been cut from a product that should sell for €189 Euros (£160) SIM free before taxes and shipping?

• RAM has been halved, from 512MB to 256MB, so some applications will not run
  
• There is no dedicated GPU, so the User Interface might not be quite so silky smooth
  
• 800mhz CPU instead of 1.4ghz
  
• Video Capture is still at 30 frames per second, but VGA, not 720p

So a few disappointments but, you know what, I'd buy it!

On to the new flagship device, the Nokia Lumia 900... but hecatae, the Lumia 900 has already been announced, it's an LTE device! Yes, but have you heard of the DC-HSPA variant?

Admittedly, DC-HSPA is a new one on me, the basic idea of the multicarrier feature is to achieve better resource utilization and spectrum efficiency by means of joint resource allocation and load balancing across the downlink carriers. DC means Dual Channel, I would compare this to ISDN, but I don't know how much of our readership knows of ISDN. Basically it can do 42Mbps download speed!

The Nokia Lumia 900 features:

• 4.3" AMOLED ClearBlack glass touchscreen
  
• one-piece polycarbonate body, like the Lumia 800
  
• excellent antenna performance, unlike a competitor
  
• Corning Gorilla Glass
  
• BP-6EW 1830mAh non-replaceable battery
  
• 8 MP main camera, Carl Zeiss optics, dual LED flash, Auto Focus, 1 MP front camera, video calling
  
• 16GB Storage (no slot for micro-SD cards)

All pretty impressive.

The Lumia 610 will start shipping in the second Quarter of 2012 for €189 Euros and the Lumia 900 will start shipping in the same quarter for €480 Euros.

What are Nokia doing to make Windows Phone feel like a Nokia device?

Nokia are including Nokia Reading, Nokia Transport and an update to Nokia Drive for their Windows Phone devices.

Nokia Reading:

• provides a single, integrated hub experience, leveraging a panorama design to make it easier and faster to enjoy news, ebooks and audio books, including the ability to access content offline and pin dynamic content to the start screen as a Live Tile.  
  
• With an emphasis on local language materials wherever it becomes available, Nokia Reading delivers a highly personalized and locally relevant service.

Future updates will include the ability to build dynamic magazines from feeds for a single integrated view of favourite online content. With no sign-in or subscriptions, Nokia Reading will be available from April.

Nokia Transport, coming to Lumia for the first time, provides convenient door-to-door, underground, tram, suburban train and bus directions for over 500 cities across 46 countries.

  
With step-by-step directions to the nearest station as well as timetable information on when the next bus or train is arriving for more than 80 cities, Nokia Transport will be available to download from the Windows Phone Marketplace in March.

A new update to Nokia Drive, the free voice-guided, turn by turn navigation app that turns any Lumia smartphone into a personal navigation device will provide full offline use and features speed limit alerts. This update too will be available to download from the Windows Phone Marketplace in March.

So, quite a lot to expect to see from Nokia over the coming months and this is before we even see the Windows Phone Apollo devices!

Source: Nokia