The first day of Nokia World 2011 taking place in London, Stephen Elop - the controversial CEO of Nokia introduced the first two Windows Phone based smartphones: Lumia 710 and Lumia 800.
For their first Windows Mobile phones, Nokia resorted to manufacturing capabilities of Compal, and largely ignored its own manufacturing facilities, much to the displeasure of Nokia workers and investors on Wall Street. The end result are two phones belonging to the Apple iPhone-sized category of smartphones, i.e. 3.7" displays.
First available Windows Phone by Nokia: the Lumia 710
The Lumia 710 reminds us of toned down version of the X7-00 (which appeared in Transformers 3), featuring a 3.7" TFT display, 5MP camera, a 1.4GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 512MB of memory, 8GB of storage and an 8MP digital camera. The 710 comes in five colors (blue, red, yellow, black, white), with swappable back covers for personalization.
okia N9 ditches MeeGo and goes for Windows Mobile 7.5 "Mango": Meet the Lumia 800
The new king of Nokia hill comes by the name Lumia 800, and if it looks familiar, you're right - Lumia 800 is nothing else but the recently released N9 phone running Microsoft-preferred hardware and Windows Phone 7.5 operating system. Lumia 800 features very similar hardware to the 710, with the main difference being doubled storage capacity to 16GB and an 8MP digital camera with Carl Zeiss optics (excellent f/2.2 focal length). Full HD recording is supported, and judging by photos created by N8 and N9, this camera should continue to be the best camera on mobile phones.
The biggest eye catcher is without any doubt, 3.7" curved AMOLED display with "ClearBlack" technology, as Nokia calls it.
Lumia phones do not offer micro-SD storage, but rather offer permanent 25GB SkyDrive account, i.e. cloud storage model known from Windows Live services such as Live Messenger etc. Microsoft pitches the SkyDrive as just one of external drives on your computers, be that smartphones or desktops. The only problem with that model on a smartphone is your carrier, but this is something every smartphone user will have to deal in the future, regardless of the platform you chose (Amazon, Apple iCloud etc.).
As additional service, Nokia will offer completely free Turn-by-Turn GPS navigation including the voice. Given that the Nokia owns Naviteq and that most other vendors have to purchase maps from Nokia anyways, this feature should be the final nail in coffin of contemporary GPS devices. Preload Maps feature is supported by default.
he phones are available for sale, with the price being 270 Euro, i.e. 376 U.S. Dollars for Lumia 710 and 420 EUR (585 U.S. Dollars) for Lumia 800 phone. Of course, these prices are without carrier subsidies, which should bring the price in line with contemporary Android and iOS phones on the market.
