Nokia Unveils Two New Windows Phone In India

Finnish mobile giant Nokia still dominates the Indian mobile handset selling more devices than any other brand but has lost the cool factor which it once had in the high end of the segment (remember Nokia Communicator?). Braced up against serious challenge in the smartphones market, it is now hoping to get the ding back with two new products to attract a more mature consumer who is not just looking for a dependable durable piece of work for talking but much more feature packed and stylish product.

It has unveiled two Windows mobile phones in India (its first ones  with the new operating system). Both the mobile phones- Lumia 800 and Lumia 710, will run on the Windows Phone 7.5 Mango and could be made available in the country by December end.

The exact price and launch date are not available as of now but looking at the features, the price of both the devices will definitely lie in the Rs 15,000 to Rs 25,000 price bracket.

Lumia 800

The mobile phone has a 3.7 inch ClearBlack AMOLED capacitive touchscreen display (800x480 pixel resolution) and is powered by a 1.4GHz Scorpion processor, Qualcomm MSM8255 Snapdragon chipset and has 512MB of RAM. The internal memory of the device is 16GB but it does not support microSD cards, although 25GB of Skydrive storage has been provided.

An 8 mega pixel auto focus rear camera (has Carl Zeiss lens) with LED flash has been provided in the mobile phone (with 1-click sharing) that can also record high definition (HD) videos (720p) at 30 frames per second. Although Nokia has decided not to provide a secondary front facing camera in the device, making video calling a problematic affair. On the connectivity front, the device has Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and 3G and comes with a microUSB 2.0 port.

The device also has a stereo FM radio with RDS and comes with GPS with A-GPS support. Additionally, it has a 1450mAh battery that the company claims will provide the user with 13 hours of talk time and 265 hours of stand-by time (on GSM networks). For business professionals, the mobile phone comes pre-loaded with Office applications like Excel, Word, Powerpoint and One Note. The dimensions of the device are 116.5mm x 61.2mm x 12.1mm and it weighs 142 grams. Consumers will have a choice between Cyan, Black and Fuchsia colours.

Lumia 710

It also has a 3.7inch TFT (no AMOLED in this case) capacitive touchscreen display (800x480 pixel resolution) and runs on the same operating system as Lumia 800. The processor and the RAM are also similar in both the devices but the internal memory of the device is only 8GB (again no microSD expansion), although the 25GB of Skydrive storage has been provided in this device also.

The camera has also been toned down to a 5 mega pixel auto focus rear camera with LED flash that can also record HD videos (720p) at 30 frames per second. Again no secondary front facing camera has been provided. On the connectivity front, the device has Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and 3G and comes with a microUSB 2.0 port.

The device also has a stereo FM radio with RDS and comes with GPS with A-GPS support. Additionally, it has a 1300mAh battery that the company claims will provide the user with 6 and a half hour of talk time and 400 hours of stand-by time (on GSM networks). The device also comes pre-loaded with Office applications. The dimensions of the device are 119mm x 62.4mm x 12.5 mm and its weight is 125.5 grams. Consumers will have a choice between White Cyan, Full Black, Full White and White Fuchsia colours.

Our Take

Both the devices are decent in terms of features, but the deciding factor will definitely be the price at which they are made available in the country. Lumia 800 should compete with the higher range mobiles like the Samsung Galaxy R I9103 (Rs 27,000), LG Optimus 2X P990 (Rs 25,450) and HTC Incredible S. The mobile loses out on the secondary camera front since all the other mobile phones have a secondary camera. The Windows operating system has not been tested against the likes of Android so we can't really compare the OS, but processor wise the device is better than all these mobiles.

Lumia 710 on the other hand should be targeted in the mid-price range segment against Sony Ericsson Xperia neo V (Rs 17,500), Samsung Galaxy S LCD I9003 (Rs 17,900) and Nokia's own 701 (Rs 17,100). Although Lumia 710 has a better processor, all these mobiles have secondary cameras so that is a downer again.