That means better low-light photos, with Xenons usually far stronger than the LED flashes we’re used to seeing on smartphones. You don’t miss out on a video light, either, with the Lumia 928′s focus-assist LED capable of being repurposed for illuminating during video recording.

Functionally, the new smartphone is much the same as what the Lumia 920 was offering months ago. However, it’s packaged up in a neater design, with the squared-off polycarbonate casing fitting more neatly into the hand, and yet still accommodating the PureView suspended optical system, which helps the high-end Lumia take such solid low-light photos.

There’s also a new display, versus that of the 920, with Nokia slotting in an OLED ClearBlack panel, coincidentally the same screen as on the Lumia 925. That’s topped with a layer of Gorilla Glass 2 which forms the entire edge-to-edge fascia of the smartphone.

Interestingly, if you head over to RadioShack, the Lumia 928 is going for half of Verizon’s upfront price, though you’ll still need to commit to a two-year agreement.

There’s more on the Lumia 928 in our hands-on and unboxing. We’ve also got photo samples from the 8.7-megapixel PureView camera.

Nokia Lumia 928 hands-on:

This Lumia device works with a 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon dual-core processor that powers a 4.5-inch display with 1280 x 768 pixel resolution. This display differs ever-so-slightly from the Nokia norm with OLED and PureMotion HD+ technology – we’ll be comparing with the Lumia 920 soon. This device is also slightly thinner than the Lumia 920, otherwise retaining most of its abilities.

You’ll find a 2,000 mAh battery inside, NFC as well as wireless charging right out of the box, and a couple of relatively decent cameras. Up front is a 1.2-megapixel camera while the back employs an 8.7 megapixel camera with Nokia’s PureView camera promise. This doesn’t necessarily mean your photos are going to be PureView 808-quality, but it does mean Nokia means business.

Below you’ll see a set of photos taken with the Lumia 928 both inside and outside on a rather bright and sunny day. And dear readers: Let us know if you’re in need of any specific place or setting for additional sample photos and we’ll make it happen for the final review.

The front of this device works with three capacitive buttons, those being a Windows Phone home button, back, and magnifying glass. The magnifying glass can bring you to Bing or it can explore an app that’s had its abilities built into it. Either way, this is the button Android axed.

You’ll be working with this device with a microSIM card from Verizon right out of the box. This device has a small – but telling – change from past Nokia devices. The SIM card slot is not one you need to jam a pin into – instead it’s a drawer – easy!

Have a peek at the timeline below for more information on the Nokia Lumia 928 and stay tuned as we give this device a full run-down in a review coming up soon!

Nokia is no stranger to the tablet question: even back in April 2011, CEO Stephen Elop was telling slate-hungry press that the company would only wade into the segment when it could bring something “uniquely Nokia” to the form-factor. However, while all has been quiet on that front in the intervening period – not to mention Nokia’s phones topping out at 4.5-inches at most, rather than following the 5+ phablet trend – Weber argues that it doesn’t necessarily mean Nokia hasn’t had a foot in that ecosystem.

“What we said, on the tablet side, is it’s a space we’re eyeing” he explained to us. “I think the reason we bet on Microsoft and Windows is becuase they have a broad ecosystem, across phones, tablets, PCs, even TV, with the same look and feel, same infrastructure, and we believe we can play in that. Whether we have a tablet or not, we can still play in that ecosystem because Windows is the unifying piece of that. So, we’re really excited about what they’re doing on Windows 8, there are some fantastic touch devices coming out … so the ecosystem that Microsoft has allows us to participate, whether we have a tablet or not.”

Still, it looks more than likely that a tablet will be in Nokia’s near future, no matter how coy the company is on admitting that. If the first step to reinvention has been developing a complete, core smartphone range, then fleshing it out with other form-factors and accessories – such as the bluntly-teased ambitions in wearables Harlow and others hinted at back at Mobile World Congress – is the inevitable next step. The important factor, Harlow says, is how usability as it is on Lumia devices today extends to a broader line-up.

“I think the word is experiences. Because as we are investing in experiences in our smartphone range, it’s logical to think that those experiences we would look to take into other types of form-factors, and make them compatible with each other” the smart devices head says. “Obviously what we would want in any portfolio is that there would be some consistency in the experience that consumers have with a Nokia product.”

An outsider might contend that Nokia now has a broad range of phones, a solid portfolio of apps and services, and differentiating hardware features like PureView, and question why scenes like those at the recent Annual General Meeting – at which Elop was harangued for refusing to consider ditching Windows Phone in favor of Android – continue to take place. According to Harlow, that reluctance for people to accept that the Windows Phone strategy was – and is – the best one for Nokia comes down to a broad-strokes misunderstanding about exactly how “open” Android really is.

“[Android] is led by Samsung, and I think you can see the difficulty that others have in standing out from Samsung, even when they have really good devices,” Harlow suggests. “I think first of all it comes down to partnership, and the partnership that we’ve had with Microsoft in terms of bringing new experiences to the platform as well as differentiating experiences, we did not believe we could have that level of partnership with Android. And that’s the key difference.”

As the smart devices chief sees it, Android’s openness is only really beneficial if you’re one company: Samsung. “To a certain degree [Android is open]” she told us. “I think I would characterize the competition in Android as more of a spec race than anything else. And so, there is one partner who is the development partner for any new release of Android, and everyone else comes sometime later. So, it’s open, but that doesn’t make you first, and that doesn’t make you necessarily the most competitive.”

It’s that more granular attitude toward OS – not just the nature of the platform, but how individual roles and relationships within the ecosystem as a whole affect what benefits the platform offers – which Harlow says makes the Microsoft-Nokia deal the best fit. “Partnership and collaboration requires two partners who are motivated to make the partnership work” she concluded. “And that is what we have with Microsoft.”

If there’s a gap remaining, it’s in how Nokia (and its partner) explains those advantages in collaboration, not to mention the fruits for users they engender, against the onslaught of iPhone and Samsung marketing. Both execs acknowledged that Nokia needs to do better at demonstrating its achievements or, as Weber puts it, getting the message right. “We believe in our investment choice on Microsoft,” he points out, “for the simple reason is that they give us the chance to differentiate, to really be able to differentiate.”

Where Apple has elevated the marketing of its iTunes/App Store ecosystem to a fine art, and Google has strength of numbers across flourishing Android installations, Nokia hasn’t quite got the tone right yet. “A lot of these imaging things takes deep partnership with Microsoft,” Weber says. “The second thing is this broad ecosystem: there’s no-one who covers the phone, the tablet, the PC, Xbox, and then what I call these “digital lifestyle services” – search, gaming, mapping, that we bring, all the cloud services – they have the most assets to pull together.”

“So then we say, how do we do that? We have to, one, have a broad portfolo, so this is the first time we’ve really had a portfolio from the low end, to the high end, and everything in between,” Weber listed off. “And then we have to do a great job executing: that’s, how do we work with Microsoft to tell that marketing message above the line; how do we execute at retail, so people see, and touch, and feel the differences between devices?”

That execution will include things like the Nokia low-light boxes, which allow direct comparisons between phone cameras in settings such as retail stores. The pyramidal boxes can adjust the amount of light inside, with a peep hole for your smartphone to snap an image, and be compared to the performance of the PureView alternative, without demanding that retailers physically dim the lights in-store. Nokia is also working on smaller versions, complete with carrier branding, Weber revealed, and says that early indications are that point-of-sale staff are far more likely to recommend Lumia handsets after a small amount of familiarization with the platform and the value-add.

“And so I feel wonderful on the portfolio, I feel really good about our partnerships with operators and customers” he summarized. “Now, it’s how do we go tell that story – how we evangelize the message; how we get people to see, touch, feel the device, the difference – and it’s all the nitty-gritty details. It’s called execution. And it’s really easy to say, and it’s hard to do, but those are the things that are going to matter.”

Amber has already been confirmed to include the Smart Camera app, which brings effects like Motion Focus, Action Shots, and other burst-image-related trickery to the Lumia 925. However, Alakarhu also told us that Amber will expand the supported ISO range of the Lumia 920, just as the 925 comes with support for out of the box.

Nokia Smart Camera hands-on:

Currently, the Lumia 920 tops out at ISO 800; with Amber installed, that will be quadrupled to ISO 3200. The result will be better low-light shots as well as improvements in sports photography and when snapping images of moving subjects.

It’s not only the old flagship which will get a photography polish after Amber. All of Nokia’s Windows Phone 8 line-up will get the newest version of the photo engineers’ algorithms, which will help increase sharpness – particularly in cropped shots, Alakarhu explained – and lower noise, in addition to improvements in exposure. There’ll also be support across the range for remapping the camera shortcut key to the Smart Camera app, instead of the Windows Phone default.

Not all of the Lumia models will see the same degree of improvement, of course. Nokia will adjust the level of tweaking depending on the core sensor; the Lumia 520, for instance, won’t attempt ISO 3200 shots, since the hardware really isn’t up to it. A final decision on what changes will be delivered to each device is yet to be reached, with Alakarhu’s team still working on that ahead of Amber’s expected release in July.

The speed at which Smart Camera clusters of shots open up – something we found to take around 15 seconds with Nokia’s current pre-production software on the 925 – will also be improved, though the photo team couldn’t tell us exactly how fast the process will become. Although it’s slower than how quickly, say, HTC’s One can open up a Zoe set, there’s a good reason for that.

One of our ongoing criticisms of the One is how much space Zoe photography takes up, both on the smartphone itself and in the cloud. Nokia has addressed that by packaging the ten stills together, rather than storing each as an individual frame; the end result doesn’t follow the “ten shots so 10x the size” explanation you might expect, Alakarhu explained. Opening and editing those takes some processing time – in fact, it’s currently the most processor-intensive thing the Lumia 925 is asked to do – but while there are other ways Nokia could deal with the files, the company is wary of diverging too greatly from imaging standards.

“I think what we want to do next is make the sharing super-easy, so that your friends can also enjoy making those changes on Facebook or their own phone” Alakarhu told us. “And so we need to find the right format, the right way to do it. There is currently no industry standard for doing that, and I don’t want to take the proprietary route for doing that, because this needs to be accessed by everyone.”

Exactly how that common format might look is unclear. HTC has opted for Zoe Share, a free – albeit temporary – web-gallery service that One owners can use to show off select stills, video clips, and highlight reels created on the smartphone. Nokia currently has no specific sharing system that preserves the Smart Camera post-processing potential, though you can of course push out the final results as regular photos through the usual Facebook, Twitter, email, and other routes.

“In the 920, we actually did a lot of the foundations” Alakarhu concluded, hinting that there was plenty more photo-centric news to be shared later in the year. “The algorithms we had have, for example. But now we have been able to do that optimization, and the pace of the development has been incredible now that we have that great foundation of algorithms.”

There’s something about metal which makes a phone feel great. Apple knew that with the iPhone 5; HTC realized it with the One; and now Nokia has succumbed with the Lumia 925 (previously known as the Nokia “Catwalk”). Specifically, the 127.5 x 70.5 x 8.5 mm, 139g chassis is constructed around a frame of anodized aluminum, which tapers to tactile, curved edges on all four sides. The metal also serves an important purpose beyond rigidity and feel, however; it’s the antenna for the Lumia 925′s pentaband 4G LTE radio (as well as the GSM/UMTS bands), saving space by making it a constituent part of the phone.

On the front there’s a slice of toughened Gorilla 2 Glass, while on the back there’s Nokia’s favorite polycarbonate. Plastic meets metal in a gentle curve at the edge of the phone, neatly dovetailing in a way that feels great nestled into your hand; that polycarbonate also swells – Nokia says “pillows” – to accommodate the camera lens, atop the dual-LED flash. A row of contact points for the optional wireless charging shell are below.

In terms of hand-feel, Nokia is onto a winner out of the gate. Gone is the heft of the Lumia 920, and its slightly toy-like glossy plastic, replaced with premium-feel materials and a more refined design. A 3.5mm headphone jack and a SIM slot punctuate the top edge, along with microUSB connectivity, while the usual volume rocker, power/lock key, and camera shortcut run along the right edge.

Nokia Lumia 925 hands-on:

Up front is another improvement, the 4.5-inch OLED ClearBlack display that debuted on Friday on the Lumia 928. Just as on the Verizon phone, it supports a high-brightness mode for outdoor readability, and super-sensitivity for use while wearing gloves. It’s also stunning to look at: colors are vivid, blacks inky, and the broad viewing angles mean you can glance almost entirely askance at the Lumia 925 and still make out graphics without aberrations. The 1280 x 768 resolution may not be the Full HD we’ve seen on some recent Android devices, but it’s certainly sufficient for text and the like on a 4.5-inch phone to be smooth.

Nokia’s emphasis with its recent Windows Phones has been on their photographic abilities, and the Lumia 925 is no different. Like the 920 and 928, it bears the coveted PureView branding, and in fact it packs the same 8.7-megapixel sensor as they do. The optical image stabilization system – which physically moves the entire camera assembly to match shake and judder – is also the same, as is the dual-LED flash system from the 920.

What’s different is the lens, and here Nokia and Carl Zeiss have cooked up a World’s First on a smartphone: the first 6-part lens. Where the Lumia 920/928 have 5-part lenses, combining five different plastic components, the new Lumia adds a sixth, glass lens, which Nokia claims will improve sharpness and low-light performance.

In fact, Nokia says the Lumia 925 is capable of the “best low light images without a flash” of any current smartphone, with its f/2.0 lens, OIS, and exclusive Zeiss optics. It also uses the 925 to debut Nokia Smart Camera, a suite of effects and post-processing that can replace the default camera app should the owner see fit.

Smart Camera approaches things much in the same way as HTC and Samsung have on the One and Galaxy S 4, respectively: with the assumption that having more photo data to choose from is A Good Thing. In the Lumia 925′s case, that means firing off a burst of 10 frames over the course of 2.5 seconds when you hit the shutter-release, elements from each of which can then be combined or generally modified in different ways.

In the gallery, Smart Camera clusters of shots show up with a single thumbnail, but when you open them (and tap the “Smart Camera” legend) the editing potential is unlocked. First up is Best Shot, which analyzes each of the ten frames and picks out whichever it decides is the best based on sharpness and other details. Swiping left and right allows for a manual override. Swipe down, meanwhile, and you go through the other options: Motion Focus, Object Removal, Action Shot, and Group Shot.

Motion Focus tries to inject some more vigor into your stills. Smart Camera automatically identifies the subject of the frame – you can swipe left and right, and see white outlines of each of the potential subjects that can be used – and then applies one of two degrees of blurring to the background. A similar editing system is implemented in the Object Removal system, with the Lumia 925 identifying potentially unwanted people or objects moving through the frame, and then combining elements from the ten different shots to get rid of them.

Nokia Lumia 925 Smart Camera demo:

Group Shot is the face-combining system we’ve already seen on previous Lumia devices, based on the same Scalado tech as BlackBerry 10 has used on the Z10 and Q10. Nokia tells us its version in Smart Camera is actually newer than what we’ve seen before, another exclusive for the Lumia line-up.

Finally, and perhaps most impressive, is Action Shot. This works best when there’s a moving object passing through a still frame: then, just as with Motion Focus, the Lumia 925 identifies the moving subject and allows you to combine multiple versions of it on top of a single background. A row of straightforward buttons along the bottom allows you to toggle content from each frame on or off, while a fade button blurs out details from all but a single, user-selected frame.

They’re ambitious effects (and Nokia says more are on the way), but they’re also system-intensive. Smart Camera shoots and saves the cluster of ten images swiftly, which is good since we hate missing a great image because of a sluggish phone, but actually using the editing tools demands some patience.

We clocked the Lumia 925 in at 15 seconds just to analyze the frames initially, when we tapped into them from the gallery. That process needs to be completed each and every time you open the same set of ten stills: there’s no caching of the analysis, for instance. Tweaking things like the combinations of Action Shot frames happens instantly, but there’s another delay involved when you export the final result, with it taking around 14 seconds to spit the still into the gallery.

Now, it’s worth remembering that Nokia still has some time to finesse the software – the Lumia 925 isn’t expected to hit shelves until June, after all – but it does take away some of the immediacy of the tweaking process. There’s also no way to just look at all ten frames without jumping straight into the editing suite, which can make browsing through photos a stop-start affair.

It’s a shame, because generally the phone runs smooth and fast. With the same dualcore processor and RAM as the Lumia 920 and 928, the Lumia 925 had no problems running through the browser and other apps that we could find. There’s also Nokia’s own HERE Maps and HERE Drive+, with offline turn-by-turn navigation among other things, and the full array of Windows Store apps to choose from. Nokia Music for free streaming and offline playlists is also included.

If we had to compare the Lumia 925 to the rest of Nokia’s current range, it’s probably best described as the specifications of the 928 with the sleek design of the 720, only with build quality that’s a step above anything we’ve seen from Nokia in recent months. Photos simply don’t do the Lumia 925 justice: you have to pick it up and feel how its careful curves fit into your hand.

True, there have been some compromises along the way – Nokia’s decision not to integrate wireless charging is perhaps acceptable given the dimensions of the phone, and the company’s supposed goal of “meaningful thinness”, but it also should be ashamed that there isn’t a snap-on wireless charging shell included in the box – but overall it’s the most compelling Windows Phone Nokia has made so far.

The full judgment will have to wait until we can spend some more time with the Lumia 925 and see how it – and its camera abilities – fit into our daily lives. That should happen closer to the smartphone’s June 2013 release, with it landing in the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, and China initially, followed by the US and other countries.

Exactly when T-Mobile USA will begin to offer the Lumia 925 is unclear. Nokia has said that the smartphone will begin to roll out in June, though that’s for Europe and China. The US release is due sometime after that; T-Mobile says it will detail exact dates and pricing soon.

Whenever it lands, it will have LTE 4G on the carrier’s fledgling network, along with the 8.7-megapixel PureView camera which Nokia is so proud of. There’s also a 4.5-inch OLED display and optional wireless charging with a clip-on back cover.

The camera may use the same sensor as in the Lumia 920 and Lumia 928, but it’s paired with a new lens assembly on the Lumia 925. That has a sixth lens component – glass, rather than the plastic of the other five parts – which Nokia says is good for better sharpness and brightness.

The free update will bring Nokia’s new photography suite to the rest of the Lumia range. Among the improvements are Motion Focus, which can separate out a moving subject from the background, and automatically blur the latter so as to emphasize the feeling of movement, and Action Shot, which allows movement from up to ten burst-frames to be combined in a single image, complete with optional blurring.

The Amber Update won’t be limited to camera tech, however. Nokia says it will confirm the full list of changes – many of which have apparently been prompted by user-requests from existing Lumia owners – closer to the point of release, but it did tell us that the new firmware will also enable dormant FM radio hardware across nearly all of its Windows Phone 8 models.

As you might expect, given the differences in processing power (and other hardware), the Amber Update experience will differ somewhat across the range of devices. The Lumia 620, for instance, lacks the FM radio chip, and so will be the only model not to get that functionality. As for the Lumia 520, that will get a reduced subset of Smart Camera features, in deference to its less capable processor.

Nokia committed to rolling back retroactive updates to its older phones back at Mobile World Congress, with smart devices chief Jo Harlow telling us in February that the company saw the average lifespan of software upgrades to be at least the 24-months of the average phone contract. That notably stands in contrast to Microsoft’s own commitments to Windows Phone 8′s longevity, which the firm has said runs for less than 18-months.

There are a couple of things worth considering. Most important is that the Lumia 925 isn’t due to hit store shelves until next month, and as such Nokia is likely to continue tweaking its camera software in the intervening period. Things like processing may well change between these samples and the end-result. Also, Nokia told us that it purposefully stripped out the EXIF data from the shots, just in case they leaked prematurely and gave the 925 game away.

It’s hard not to be impressed by what the Lumia 925 achieves. Nokia is billing the phone as being capable of the best low-light performance, without a flash, of any current smartphone. While it fell short of comparing the Lumia 928 with the HTC One, our current king of low-light abilities, when it made similar boasts last week, the company tells us that it will show no such reserve when it comes to comparing the Lumia 925 with rivals.

In fact, Nokia says, both it and Microsoft plan to be more aggressive in their comparisons between Lumia Windows Phones and rivals, whether they run iOS, Android, or something else. A glance through the sample shots suggests photography isn’t a bad place to start, either. Close-ups are crisp, colors look great – without the cartoonish over-saturation some phones tend toward – and though there’s clearly noise and grain to be found in images taken in lower-light conditions, they’re nonetheless impressive.

As for Nokia’s Smart Camera, with the right subject we can see effects like Action Shot – which pieces together time-lapse images from multiple frames – and Motion Focus being popular. They’ll require some forward planning, maybe, though given Nokia will allow Smart Camera to be set as the default photography app, there’s perhaps no real downside – barring the impact taking ten frames each time will have on the non-expandable 16GB of storage – to always shooting in the new mode.

Nothing quite satisfies like running a camera through its paces yourself, so we’ll reserve our full opinion on the Lumia 925′s camera skills until we can spend more time one-on-one with it. That said, Nokia’s own samples have certainly left us hopeful that this could be another bar-raising option for mobile photography.

Up front there’s the 4.5-inch OLED PureMotion HD+ display we saw on the Lumia 928, running at 1280 x 768 resolution and using Nokia’s ClearBlack technology for improved contrast. It also packs the super-sensitive touch system which allows for gloved use, though is thinner and lighter than the 928, measuring in at 127.5 x 70.5 x 8.5 mm and 139g. Above is a 1.2-megapixel front camera for Skype calls, among other things.

Where the Lumia range has previously been all-plastic, the Lumia 928 uses an aluminum frame for lightness and structural strength. That runs around the edge of the phone, and also serves as the handset’s antenna. Inset on the rear is a non-removable polycarbonate plate, available in three color finishes.

On the back, there’s an 8.7-megapixel camera, using the same optical image stabilized CMOS as on the Lumia 928 and the dual-LED flash of the Lumia 920, but here paired with a brand new, 6-component f/2.0 lens. Unlike the 928 and 920, which each use 5-part plastic lens arrays, the Lumia 925 adds a sixth, glass lens which Nokia says provides greater sharpness and allows in extra light.

That should come in handy with Nokia’s new photography software, debuting on the Lumia 928. Nokia Smart Camera is the next generation of Nokia Smart Shoot, and can be used interchangeably with the regular camera app, or set as the default for everyday use. Somewhat similar to HTC’s Zoe system, Smart Camera automatically fires off ten 5-megapixel frames over the space of around 2.5s: they can then be edited in a number of ways.

Normally, Smart Camera automatically picks out what it believes to be the Best Shot – by sharpness and other factors – though that can be over-ridden. There’s also background object removal, and moving object removal, with the Lumia 928 automatically identifying what it can delete. Motion Focus, meanwhile, separates the subject from the background, and automatically applies blur to the background so as to emphasize the movement in the frame.

Then there’s a new version of the group shot tool, which allows different facial expressions from multiple images to be combined into a single frame. Previously, that was based on technology Nokia acquired from Scalado – and shared with BlackBerry 10, which licensed the system – but in Smart Camera it’s apparently an all-new version.

Most impressive, though, is Action Shot. That takes moving details from the ten frames and combines them into a single image, great for showing the movement of people through the picture for instance. A string of buttons along the bottom of the screen allows content from each of the ten burst-shots to be included or hidden, while a fade control picks out one of the parts to be solid while the rest are faded out. Nokia Camera Lens will continue to be available as a separate app, including Cinemagram for creating partially-animated GIFs, while Nokia has also confirmed that Hipstamatic is coming to Lumia.

Windows Phone 8 – and all the camera apps – runs on Qualcomm’s 1.5GHz dualcore Snapdragon S4 chip, paired with 1GB of RAM and 16GB of storage. Connectivity includes pentaband LTE, WiFi a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0, and NFC, and there’s A-GPS and Glonass, and a gyroscope. The 2,000 mAh battery is fixed and non-user-accessible; Nokia will offer wireless charging as an option, enabled with clip-on shells that also protect the rear and corners of the Lumia 928, and which will be available in red, yellow, black, and white finishes.

The Nokia Lumia 928 itself will be offered in three finishes: brushed silver metal with either white or grey polycarbonate, or black metal with matching black polycarbonate. It is expected to begin shipping initially in the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, and China come June, with the US and “other markets” following on later. Pricing will be around €469 ($608/£398) pre-taxes and subsidies.

Nokia stoked that camera speculation itself with its TV commercial yesterday; since then, the first shot of the Lumia 925 has leaked. You could be forgiven for seeing Nokia almost as a mobile photography company first these days, given imaging tends to be its top-line features for every new smartphone.

Nokia has been pushing camera tech for years now, but arguably made its name as an innovator with the 808 PureView of 2012. It may have been chunky, and used Symbian – which Nokia had already confirmed was in its death-throes – but it also tore up the playbook for mobile photography, approaching elements like lossless zooming and balancing picture size with levels of noise in previously-unseen ways.

The 808 is best remembered for its 41-megapixel sensor, a huge CMOS positively overspilling with pixels. At the time, Nokia likened it to putting out more buckets to catch more rainfall: the 808 was designed not to produce ridiculously high resolution stills, but more average shots (the default was 5-megapixels) that combined data from clusters of pixels to smooth out glitches and aberrations, and make for more accurate colors and brightness.

“The new Nokia Lumia is coming…” teaser video:

In the process, it also enabled lossless digital zooming: zoom without the moving lenses of an optical system. By cropping sections of the image – still at the 5-megapixel resolution – the 808 could effectively zoom into the frame but without the quality loss associated with every other digital zoom.

So far, though, we’re yet to see that original PureView approach replicated on a Windows Phone. The Lumia 920 and 928 both bear PureView branding, for instance, but their emphasis has been on the way more typical megapixel sensors can be supported with optical image stabilization to boost picture quality. Instead of the pixel-clusters of the 808, both of the high-end Windows Phones try to craft better images by holding their sensors steady.

That’s not to say they can’t be “true” PureView just because they lack a few dozen megapixels, however. The massive sensor was only half of the 808 story: equally important was Nokia’s custom Carl Zeiss optics, which were essential for piping the right light in the right way to the oversized CMOS. Nokia even took us to meet with the Zeiss team for a behind-the-scenes look at what optical magic was used, a complex, five-lens assembly with a range of aspheric surfaces that explained some of the 808′s thickness, just as the broad sensor explained its width.

Lenses may not be as immediately headline-grabbing as great lashings of megapixels, but they’re the unsung heroes that Nokia has been busily working away on. Zeiss and Nokia renewed their partnership back in early 2012, and came up with what’s described as “PureView Phase 2″: a groundbreaking optical image stabilization lens which can be paired with a more traditional-resolution sensor.

Discussed in this white paper [pdf link] around the time of the Lumia 920, the second-gen system actually has a more light-friendly lens than the 808 manages: f/2.0 versus the original PureView’s f/2.4, with the same 26mm wide optics. That works with an image stabilization system that rather than move just a single lens element, actually shifts the whole optical assembly up to 500 times per second.

Hardware is only half of any story, of course, and Nokia will undoubtedly have software news to share about the Lumia 925 as well. As we’ve seen from the company’s own work to-date on Camera Lenses, and on rivals’ photography systems like Zoe on the HTC One and the native GIF-maker on the Galaxy S 4, ways of not only shooting but of manipulating stills are big business in today’s handsets.

They all demand good quality to begin with, though, and interestingly all approach that in different ways: a small number of gigantic UltraPixels from HTC, 13-megapixels-worth of smaller pixels from Samsung, and whatever PureView combination Nokia decides to bless the Lumia 925 with.

Nokia isn’t a camera company, but it’s camera technology that it’s counting on to set it apart in the market. We’ll find out how the Lumia 925 fits into that strategy tomorrow, when Nokia unveils the phone officially at its London, UK event on May 14th.

Nokia’s teaser video yesterday – which debuted during a UK TV commercial – showed the back of the smartphone, complete with the tagline “More than your eyes can see.” That led to expectations that it would bear a large-resolution sensor, the camera itself protruding slightly from the back-panel of the phone.

Nokia new Lumia teaser:

This new image, however, shows the other side of the smartphone. It’s a more sober device than previous Lumia, more akin in color scheme to the Lumia 928 unveiled for Verizon’s network last Friday, than the bright hues of more widespread models like the Lumia 920.

According to previous rumors, the Lumia 925 will have a metal body rather than polycarbonate plastic, though it’s hard to tell whether that’s the case from this leaked shot. It certainly looks to be thinner than the Lumia 920, which was criticized by many for its chunky casing that accommodated the optical image stabilization system to go with the 8.7-megapixel camera.

Exactly how many megapixels the Lumia 925 will offer is unclear. Some have speculated that the phone is the device so-far known by the codename “EOS“, and expected to have an 808 PureView-like huge megapixel sensor. Other rumors have indicated the 925 is more likely to be the “Catwalk“, which is tipped to have a more mainstream camera but a slender, higher-quality body.

We’ll know more tomorrow, when Nokia takes the stage in London, UK, and reveals all. SlashGear will be there to bring back all the details.

The obvious interpretation of the tagline is a super-high-resolution sensor, something previously rumored for the EOS and to which Nokia itself is no stranger. Chatter of the EOS picked up at the top end of the year, described as offering “proper PureView” in a similar manner to the well-esteemed but niche 808 PureView. However, there’s also talk of a separate device, the Nokia Catwalk, which is also believed to have a large-megapixel-count sensor (though smaller than EOS) and a metal body.

Although recent Lumia handsets, such as the 920, have borne the PureView brand, Nokia has yet to repeat its complex pixel-clustering approach to high-resolution photography on the 808. That phone used a whopping 41-megapixel sensor, though defaulted to roughly 5-megapixel stills: the camera combined data from multiple adjacent pixels to iron out any glitches or mistakes, or alternatively could provide lossless-quality digital zooming.

As a system, the original PureView technology worked – you can see quite how well in our review of the Nokia 808 PureView – but the oversized sensor had unavoidable consequences on the heft of the handset. The larger-than-normal build, along with the fact that the roughly five year development time meant it was still running Symbian, rather than Windows Phone, meant it never amounted to much more than a curio in Nokia’s line-up.

Assuming the EOS – or whatever Lumia name the phone is officially dubbed – can avoid that bulk issue, it could well succeed where the 808 struggled, however. According to the rumor-mill, it will use a specially-waterproofed, aluminum casing courtesy of nano-coating experts P2i, though it’s impossible to tell from the commercial whether the handset is metal or metal-effect plastic.

Nokia is no stranger to teaser-campaigns, with the company having spent much of the last seven days flirting around the new Lumia 928. That handset, headed to Verizon in a few days time, was originally expected to make its official debut alongside the “EOS” on Tuesday, but Nokia pulled the trigger on the announcement on Friday last week.

SlashGear will be with Nokia this coming Tuesday to bring back all the details of the new Lumia.

SOURCE: TechCrunch; Pocket-lint

There’s wireless charging, as you’d expect from a device based on the Lumia 920, and NFC. That means the phone can be easily paired with wireless speakers and such, using Bluetooth 3.0 to squirt music across. Other connectivity includes WiFi a/b/g/n (2.4/5GHz) and microUSB.

Verizon Nokia Lumia 928 demo:

Nokia throws in HERE Maps, HERE Drive+, and HERE City Lens for easier navigation, along with the camera enhancements such as panoramic photos and animated GIFs. Optical image stabilization is included, just as Nokia demonstrated recently by strapping the phone to a remote-control helicopter, as well as a Xenon flash and Carl Zeiss optics. As for video recording, that’s supported at up to 1080p resolution.

The display, meanwhile, uses Nokia’s ClearBlack technology, and runs at 1280 x 768 resolution. It has a high-brightness outdoors mode, running at 500nits, and the super-sensitive touchscreen which can be used by gloves. The battery is a 2,000 mAh pack, and there’s 1GB of RAM paired with the 1.5GHz dualcore MSM8960 processor, and 32GB of user-storage.

Connectivity is impressive, with the Lumia 928 coming “Global Ready”: that means quadband GSM and UMTS HSPA for when you’re abroad, and EVDO/Rev.A and LTE for when you’re in the US on Verizon’s 4G network. It’s unclear whether Verizon will supply the phone SIM unlocked, however, for international use.

The Nokia Lumia 928 will hit Verizon on May 16, the company says, priced at $99.99 after a $50 mail-in-rebate, and assuming a new two-year agreement.

Interestingly, the Lumia 928 had been expected to debut at Nokia’s London event next Tuesday. Exactly what will be the star of that show remains to be seen, though SlashGear will be there to bring you all the details as they’re announced.

The argument, as Nokia puts it, is that just because a phone may be cheap – or a shopper have only a small budget – that doesn’t mean there is less of a concern for design. Conversely, the assumption that hardware is the be-all and end-all of buying decisions is an erroneous one, Nokia’s User Experience Design VP Peter Skillman told us, with the theoretical budget potential users have in mind not solely being monopolized by what gets listed in the tech specs.

That’s certainly the way Nokia’s focus groups apparently lean, with the company claiming to have constructed this first of the new Asha touch range according to the sum of their demands. Nokia took its designers on a world tour, the company says, to focus on more than just building to a budget.

Making of the Nokia Asha 501:

The Asha 501 faces strong competition, on paper at least, from cheap handsets predominantly running Android. They’re widely available in India, China, and other countries Nokia is targeting with Asha, and for the same equivalent of $100 (or less), often with larger displays but still offering things like dual-SIM support and expandable memory.

What they don’t have, generally, is the same emphasis on design, and that may be Nokia’s wild-card. In a world of black, featureless slabs, the Asha’s near-lurid colors are not only attention-grabbing but memorable. That’s even if users eventually opt for the more sober white or black casings – which can, of course, be interchanged with other finishes.

The effort to tailor device to audience has another advantage. Android may run the gamut from bargain device to high-end flagship, but the user-experience on lower-powered phones (i.e. cheap ones) can leave plenty to be desired. In contrast, the carefully optimization Asha platform on the 501 doesn’t feel like the shabby cousin left languishing with an underpowered processor. Apps are swift; screen transitions lag-free.

The benefits of that could take a little explaining, and would probably require some hands-on time before they became clear, but if Nokia’s color schemes can get potential customers in the door and picking the Asha 501 up, that challenge gets a little easier. There’s more on the Asha 501 in our full hands-on.

Nokia Asha 501 hands-on:

Unlike in Europe, where the full extent of Nokia’s line-up has been made available, those in the US have had to deal with the company’s carrier-exclusive promotion. That has meant certain models are only available on certain networks, such as the Lumia 920 being exclusive to AT&T.

The Lumia 620 remains one of our favorite Windows Phones from Nokia’s lineup. The budget nature of the handset suits the first-time-smartphone-owner audience that Windows Phone caters to particularly well, while the interchangeable covers stand out in among a sea of black, white, and silver devices. There’s more detail in our full review.

Unfortunately, it seems Aio isn’t quite set up to handle all of the Lumia 620′s flexibility. The carrier currently doesn’t offer any of the “dual-shot” covers separately, only the blue finish that comes with the phone by default.

Of course, the main downside is that Aio Wireless is only available in a very limited number of locations at present: just Houston, Orlando, and Tampa, in fact. AT&T promises more coverage “over the coming weeks” though is yet to ink a specific roadmap.

[via Nokia Conversations]

Nokia took the Lumia 928 to Squamish valley in British Columbia, and set to work zooming the phone around the scenery. “We attached the Lumia to a remote control helicopter and filmed as many remote, scenic and inaccessible locations as we could in one amazing day of good weather” Nokia explains of the project.

Whereas many smartphones use digital image stabilization techniques to try to smooth out judder and shake in video recording, there’s no replacement for physically controlling movement of the lens. In the Lumia 920, Nokia used a special “suspended lens” system which basically mounted the camera components on a shiftable platform inside the phone, and then adjusts its position according to movement data from a gyroscope.

That OIS system can handle up to 500 movements per second, and it’s that which helps smooth out the jerkiness of hand-held filming. Or, in this case and the Lumia 928, the sort of filming you might get when you’re fixed to a flying vehicle.

“We drove up old logging roads and flew off the sides of cliffs, we filmed sunken barges that can only be seen when the tide is completely out, and we flew the helicopter into waterfalls and river gorges to capture footage that you wouldn’t be able to see in any other way” Nokia

Previous Lumia 928 demonstrations have also focused on the phone’s recording abilities. First, Nokia showed how the 8.7-megapixel PureView camera fared against the iPhone 5 and Samsung Galaxy S III, with stronger low-light performance among other advantages; then, the high dynamic range for audio recording was illustrated.

This latest test doesn’t make any direct comparisons – Nokia didn’t strap any rival phones to the helicopter – but, while it’s not quite what you might get from a BBC nature documentary, the footage is impressive nonetheless. We’re expecting the Lumia 928 to be made official, for Verizon and other international carriers, at an event Nokia is hosting next week.

That then spreads the remainder of the cost of the smartphone out, over the length of the 24-month agreement. You’ll be looking at $5 extra on your bill each month for the privilege, though at least you’re paying no more than you would if you spent the money upfront. T-Mobile will offer the payment plan option from May 22.

As for the Lumia 521 itself, unsurprisingly it’s a variant on the Lumia 520 we reviewed last month, complete with a 5-megapixel camera, 4-inch touchscreen, and support for 720p HD video recording. However, it will gain WiFi Calling in T-Mobile’s version, though that won’t be enabled until a firmware update is ready from May 20.

Those who pick up the phone early, at a Microsoft Retail Store or Walmart, will have to wait for that update to be pushed out to their phone before they can make WiFi calls. That’ll be installed OTA, however, rather than demanding the Lumia 521 be plugged into a computer.

Nokia confirmed the sales decision, which not only affects the single- and dual-SIM variants of today’s Asha 501, but future Asha touch models, speaking to SlashGear in advance of the launch in India today. The phone has already been confirmed for Latin America, India, and Africa from June, with European availability – including the UK – from Q3 2013.

For the US and Canada, however, Nokia will be sticking with its focus on the Lumia range of Windows Phones. The company has struggled with low-cost handsets in the North American market in the past, and has since attempted a more strategic process rolling out Windows Phone, with carrier-exclusives rather than broadly offering each model across multiple networks.

That approach has had mixed results, with Nokia recently announcing its strongest ever global Lumia sales in the most recent quarter, but Windows Phone still dawdling in the mid-single-figures in terms of smartphone OS marketshare. Unsurprisingly, that’s left some investors unhappy, with calls at the recent annual general meeting to switch over from Microsoft’s platform to Android.

That looks unlikely, and Nokia will reveal at least one new handset running the OS at an event next week, the Lumia 928, expected to hit Verizon as a probable exclusive in the US.

If that’s the case, it could be Nokia is using the LED for a focus light, or potentially including it so that the Lumia 928 can use it as a video lamp when recording footage. The Xenon flash is a hotly-anticipated inclusion, a rare addition to a smartphone though one expected to pair well with the 8.7-megapixel camera and Carl Zeiss optics that Nokia has already confirmed.

Meanwhile, Nokia is also pitting the Lumia 928 against the Galaxy S III in terms of audio performance, testing out the two smartphones for their ability to record natural-sounding soundtracks. The test subject in this case is a subway band, with the new Windows Phone showing a far broader frequency range than its Android rival.

That’s something Nokia has emphasized before, on the 808 PureView, though the Lumia 928 is a whole lot more pocket-friendly than its Symbian predecessor. As per the low-light recording test earlier this week, though, we can’t help but wish that Nokia had pitted its new phone against the HTC One, which itself uses clever microphone technology to improve its audio pick-up.

If all goes to plan, we should expect to see the Lumia 928 officially detailed at a London event Nokia is holding next week, though it appears the Finns are keen to spill some of the headline features in the run-up to that.

The small capacity is down to the relatively small size, with the DC-18 measuring in at just 57 x 57 x 14.9 mm and 65g. Up front there’s a battery status indicator, which lights up with the current charge level when you pull out the retractable microUSB cable.

Pulling the cable free turns the DC-18 on, while tucking it back into place turns it off. That does leave the microUSB plug itself protruding, which seems like a recipe for getting it caught on your bag or the lining of your coat pocket, however.

Nokia will offer the DC-18 in four colors – a Lumia and Asha 501 matching cyan, magenta, white, and yellow – though the company is yet to confirm pricing. We’re guessing it’ll be relatively affordable, however, since the DC-16 (which actually has a larger, 2,200 mAh battery) portable charger comes in at around $40.

That Fastlane list also has shortcuts to posting Twitter and Facebook status updates, as well as messaging previews and music controls. Nokia also loads its Xpress Browser, which uses server-side compression to strip away extraneous bulk from webpages and thus save data costs and load times; new for the Asha 501, however, is Xpress Now, which creats a custom digital magazine based on curated news content selected based on the user’s interests.

As for hardware, there’ll be single- and dual-SIM variants, depending on market, with both having 2G, WiFi, and Bluetooth. No 3G – though that’s likely to come in future Asha touch models – but there’s a 3.2-megapixel camera on the back and a 4GB microSD card preloaded. Access to the Nokia app store is supported, and Nokia will be pushing out HERE Maps services from Q3 2013.

There’s also Nokia’s deal with EA Games, offering forty titles for download to the phone. Other available apps include Facebook, Twitter, LINE, Foursquare, LinkedIn, ESPN, CNN, and eBuddy. A WhatsApp app is likely, Nokia says.

Making of the Asha 501:

As well as the sub-$100 price, the Asha 501 will be offered with various data and social networking deals, depending on carrier. Airtel subscribers, for instance, will get free Facebook access for a limited period in Africa and India, while Telkomsel subscribers in Asia-Pacific will get a month of free data, to allow people to load up their phone with apps and such. Update: Nokia UK confirms the Asha 501 will launch in the UK in Q3 2013.

For more on the Asha 501, check out our full hands-on.

Nokia isn’t new to making cheap phones, nor cheap touchscreen handsets. Its previous Asha series have run the gamut from numeric keypads through QWERTY thumbboards, to full-touch, with pricing in the low double-digits even before operators have had their way with subsidies. The Asha 501, though, is of a new breed: the first to market to run the new “Asha platform” for a start, and the closest an Asha has come to not only a Lumia Windows Phone, but to Nokia’s ill-fated but highly-esteemed N9.

So, you get a compact, sturdy unibody plastic chassis that’s worlds apart from the cheap feeling casing of previous Asha phones, and available in a choice of Lumia-esque colors – red, green, cyan, yellow, white, or black – with a slab of scratch-resistant glass up front. Just because it’s a cheap phone doesn’t mean it compromises on design: fit and finish of the handsets we saw felt far above the $100 price point, and the neat stylistic touches – such as the oval stud on the lower back panel, which not only allows you to remove the cover but serves as the speaker hole – leave the Asha 501 punching higher than its peers.

The hardware straddles the line between price and ability. Most disappointing – though understandable, given the target market – is the absence of 3G, with the Asha 501 making do with a 2G connection along with WiFi. There’ll be 3G Asha touch phones in future, Nokia tells us. Both single- and dual-SIM versions of the 501 will be offered, depending on location, with the first SIM under the battery but the second hot-swappable next to it, and a microSD slot that will come preloaded with a 4GB card. Dual-SIM models will be able to switch between the two cards without demanding the phone be power-cycled.

Speaking of power, that’s another string to the Asha 501′s bow. Nokia is quoting a runtime of up to 48 days standby (from the single-SIM version; the dual-SIM manages up to 26 days standby) or up to 17hrs talktime, which is more than impressive for a touchscreen smartphone. There’s Bluetooth inside too, along with a 3.2-megapixel camera.

Nokia Asha 501 hands-on video:

The tech is only half of the story, though; the other side is the new Asha platform. It may be built on some of the fundamentals of S40, but in practice it’s a new beast almost entirely, far more reminiscent of MeeGo on 2011′s N9 than anything else. We loved MeeGo and the N9, and so are glad to see that Nokia has in effect distilled much of what made them great into a device that’s far more ready for the mass market.

Swiping is the name of the game, with the Asha platform homescreen split into two views: the app launcher, a grid of “squircle” icons, and the Fastlane, a notification stream that tracks how you use your phone in chronological order. Apps loaded, calls and messages made or received, photos or videos taken, music played, or social networking updates posted are all listed, with the single physical control on the fascia – the back button – making multitasking between apps straightforward. Pull the Fastlane down, meanwhile, and you get a glimpse of what’s round the corner, with upcoming calendar entries listed, along with single-tap updating of Facebook and/or Twitter.

The other big software addition is Nokia Xpress Now, which builds on the Xpress browser – supporting server-side compression to cut down on data costs and delays – with a dynamically customized web-based “magazine” of news content that automatically pulls in new information based on your previous reading preferences. The browser itself has been redesigned with big, easily navigable buttons from the outset, along with a merged address/search bar that can be switched between Bing, Google, and Yahoo. HERE mapping will arrive in Q3 2013, meanwhile, and pave the way for more of Nokia’s custom location services to be added to the Asha platform.

Nokia isn’t handling all the apps itself, however. The Asha platform has access to a download store for third-party titles, with only a minor amount of fettling needed to get existing S40 software ready for the new OS. Nokia has carried over its deal with EA Games to offer forty free titles for all new buyers, while Facebook, Foursquare, LINE, Twitter, and more all have software ready to download. Nokia tells us it expects 90-percent of the so-called “key apps” to be available for the Asha platform within the next few months, a somewhat nebulous promise admittedly, but one which at least suggests the Finns aren’t entirely focused on pushing Windows Phone.

In practice, it all works surprisingly well, considering the price. At 99.2 x 58 x 12.1 mm and 98g it’s a short, stubby little thing that nestles into the palm nicely; Nokia isn’t talking processor speed or memory, instead expecting that the fluidity of what User Experience Design VP Peter Skillman – who also led the N9 project – tells us is a heavily optimized UI layer will speak for itself. Sure enough, we have no complaints around performance, though the LCD display has mediocre viewing angles (although we can stomach its QVGA resolution given the overall small size).

The Fastlane system quickly becomes second nature. By swiping left or right in an app you return to the homescreen – either app launcher or Fastlane, depending on what you used last – while dragging town from the top edge pulls open a notification drawer complete with toggles between the two SIMs (if supported) and shortcuts for WiFi, Bluetooth, and other settings. Pull up from the bottom edge and you find the contextual menu, helping keep the UI as clear as possible for the app itself. It leaves the software experience feeling more expansive than it actually is, aided by the use of MeeGo-esque graphics that still look crisp and clean even several years down the line.

As on the N9, you tap the display to wake the phone from standby. Notifications pop up as scrollable blocks on the lockscreen, and you can either swipe generally to get to the homescreen, or swipe a notification itself to jump straight into the relevant app. Nokia has usefully added a SIM icon to show which account the notification comes from. There’s also support for music playback controls when locked – along with, optionally, a dim but persistent clock always kept on-screen – and in the Fastlane; Nokia will bundle a set of bright magenta wired headphones in the box, and audio quality from them and the the Asha 501′s speaker is surprisingly strong.

Given the affection many within Nokia had for the N9, and the frustration – inside and out of the company – at seeing the MeeGo project cancelled, we were curious as to whether Skillman felt the Asha 501 was cribbing from that OS as an homage or an insult. Letting go of MeeGo was tough, he told us, but the potential benefits from the new Asha platform, not to mention the potential audience, is considerably greater. In all, they amount to a “fit for purpose experience” he explained, which epitomizes Nokia’s ambitions with MeeGo but at a price point that opens the range up in ways the N9 could never have managed. Yet, even with cost as an ever-present consideration, Nokia still had room to call the Bratislava Symphony in to record a new batch of custom ringtones, and commission artists to create the preloaded wallpapers.

With many manufacturers, there’s a tendency to compare their cheap smartphones with their higher-tier models and find them very obviously lacking. Nokia’s Asha 501 somehow manages to escape that fate, even when placed next to a Lumia 820 or 920. The Windows Phone will undoubtedly be more flexible, and better specified, but the Asha gives none of the sluggish reminder with every swipe and tap that it’s a far cheaper phone, unlike many rivals might. With 3G, we could see it being a hit for those wanting the web and app experience of a smartphone, only without the bulk and expense one might traditionally entail. Similarly, as a second phone – for taking away on a weekend trip free from the tyranny of a charger, or to a festival where you wouldn’t risk an iPhone – it has obvious charms.

Subscribers in Africa, India, and Latin America will get the Asha 501 first, with Airtel, Telkomsel, America Movil, and MTN all confirming they’ll offer the phone. Expected to begin shipping in late June 2013, it will go on sale through as many as sixty operators across 90 countries; UK sales will begin in Q3. Rival phone manufacturers, Skillman pointed out to us, have effectively given up on the low-end of the market. “We still feel we have something to offer there,” he concluded.

The Nokia Asha 501 is just the latest in a recent run of budget devices shown by Nokia here in 2013. The Nokia Asha 210 brought a QWERTY hardware smartphone to the market with its own dedicated WhatsApp key. The Nokia 105 introduced at MWC 2013 brought on just about the most simple mobile phone in the history of the world to the market.

UPDATE: Evleaks updates us with the following: “Tomorrow, in India, actually :D”. We’ll be waiting!

Likewise the Nokia 301 was introduced to keep the company’s budget filings at a head. Windows Phone remains the mainstay of Nokia’s push with their Lumia lineup, as well, budget devices continuing to hit the airwaves throughout the end of Winter and the start of Spring – see SlashGear’s review lineup of the Nokia Lumia 620, Nokia Lumia 520, and Nokia Lumia 720, each of them having popped up in the past few months.

It should come as no surprise that Nokia will be continuing to create Asha smartphones as reports from earlier this year made it clear: Asha out-sells Lumia 2 to 1. And it wouldn’t be right for Nokia to keep with the Asha 205 and 206 for very much longer – gotta stay fresh!

[via Evleaks]

“See how the 8.7MP PureView camera with Carl Zeiss optics and Optical Image Stabilization outperforms leading smartphones in all kinds of lighting conditions” Nokia’s tagline crows, alongside press shots of the somewhat slab-sided phone. Just as the previous advert leaks have indicated, the Lumia 928 is a more squared off handset than previous Lumia, with a narrow colored bar running around the edge in a way that reminds us a little of the Sony Xperia Z.

Still, the hardware is expected to be broadly in line with the Lumia 920, with a 4.5-inch display. The Lumia 928 could use an AMOLED panel rather than the LCD of the 920, however, along with including radio support for Verizon; the carrier was namechecked in print versions of the PureView commercial earlier this week.

As for the camera testing, Nokia apparently took the Lumia 928 along with a couple of its competitors to Adventureland in Farmingdale, New York, where they were strapped to the front of “The Hurricane” rollercoaster. That gives the Finnish company the chance to show off the improved low-light performance and the reduction in shake; if Nokia can also deliver that without the bulk and weight that the Lumia 920 was criticized for, then the Lumia 928 could stand a much better chance in the market.

Still, the one phone we’d have liked to have seen compared – the HTC One – wasn’t invited on the daytrip, and so it remains to be seen whether Nokia’s PureView fettling will squash HTC’s UltraPixel technology. Given the speed at which Nokia is gushing Lumia 928 details, however, we can’t be far off the official release and some concrete answers.

“You’re a nice guy … and the leadership team is doing its best, but clearly, it’s not enough,” shareholder Hannu Virtanen said during the event. “Are you aware that results are what matter? The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Please switch to another road.”

Nokia has been clear that it is not preparing a “Plan B” in the wings should Windows Phone fail, instead focusing solely on pushing Microsoft’s platform. That singular purpose isn’t enough to convince investors and market watchers, however, leaving some suggesting that Nokia should abdicate from the high-end smartphone segment and instead focus on the mid-tier, picking up those buyers in emerging markets or upgrading from feature-phones.

“Maybe they could go back to Google and say we also want to go with Android” one Greenwich Consulting analyst suggested. “Even if it hurts. Microsoft, they’ve had their chances, and are not managing to take off.”

Exactly what the split of support for and against Windows Phone ended up is unclear, but Nokia’s share price shows the brunt of the ill feeling. Some investors admitted they still held the stock for “sentimental” reasons rather than good business sense; the share price is currently dawdling in the mid-$3 range.

Whether that will change any time soon depends largely on how well Nokia can convince the market it wants to open up for Windows Phone. The company announced losses of $196m in its most recent financial period, despite selling the most Lumia handsets it has in any previous quarter. That’s still not enough to either buoy Windows Phone’s niche in the market or satisfy analysts. “He’s managed to decrease costs but not to increase market share” one pointed out.

Next up for Nokia is an event in India on Thursday, expected to see new, low-cost devices revealed for the developing markets, and then a Lumia event later in the month. That’s expected to see the Lumia 928 officially revealed along with a high-megapixel PureView cameraphone, believed to be codenamed EOS. Photography has been one of Nokia’s key areas of development, both in its own R&D labs and in terms of external investment into firms like Pelican, which specialize in multi-lens cluster arrays.

The URL mentioned in the advert – nokia.com/lumia928 – is, surprisingly, already active, though there’s less detail to be found than in the print version. The image is the same, aside from the Verizon logo being absent, and there are no specifications; however, the filename of the image itself does confirm that this is the Lumia 928.

Chatter of the Lumia 928 has been circulating for some time now, with early talk of an aluminum chassis and a more squared off design than the Lumia 920 that the phone is presumed to be based upon. Like the 920, the 928 is expected to use a 4.5-inch display, though there has been talk of Nokia using AMOLED panel technology rather than the ClearBlack LCD of the older device.

Nokia will hold a Lumia event on May 14, though given that will be in London it would imply that either the Lumia 928 is intended for regions beyond Verizon’s coverage, or that the phone will be the support act for another, more broadly available phone. That could well be the device believed to be codenamed EOS, a more photography-centric handset that, so the speculation suggests, could have a waterproof aluminum coating.

Waterproofing may well be something Nokia is looking to push in its new 2013 line-up. The beach photography shown in this Lumia 928 commercial could be a hint that the phone will have a weather-resistant casing.

Engadget speculates that a deal between Nokia and Pelican has already been signed, since a new device can take months of testing before it’s ready to be revealed, which means that a phone with Pelican’s array camera could be close to being done, or even already in its testing phases.

Pelican’s array camera uses a 4×4 grid of 16 lenses total. Each lens in the array captures a single color, which would be either red, blue, or green. This means that photos would have much less noise than traditional camera, since there would be no interference like there would be when capturing all three colors in the same plain.

Plus, since the 16 lens would take a photo of a subject at just slightly different angles, the images would contain a 3D component as well, which can be processed in specialized Pelican software and combine all 16 images into one single JPEG for regular use. This kind of technology would be the first for a smartphone camera, and could possibly put the 41MP Nokia 808 PureView to shame.

[via Engadget]

The mod takes advantage of the fact that the Qi wireless charging system which Nokia relies upon operates even if there’s something in-between the pad and the phone itself. The exact distance depends on what the material is: anything from around 5mm to a few centimeters or so.

Actually fitting the pieces together is a simple case of shaving away sufficient wood in the top of the IKEA table – or, indeed, any furniture you’ve a mind to cut up – and then fixing the Nokia charger underneath. There’s some flexibility in where you can position the phone and still get it to charge, and of course the Lumia phones give a useful alert tone when they connect properly.

A second video goes through some of the technical details, including answering those who worry that an inductive charging plate mere inches from your head all night might not be such a great idea, health-wise. Best of all, it’s not Lumia-specific; numerous companies have adopted Qi, including LG for the Nexus 4, and so even if you upgrade your phone, there’s still a fair chance you’ll be able to use the same nightstand mod with it.

DIY Qi Wireless Charging Nightstand:

Nightstand mod Q&A:

Array cameras demand complex processing in order to actually achieve all that, however, which has meant news from Pelican has been quiet since the initial reveal. However, Nokia Growth Partners’ Bo Ilsoe told Bloomberg, such camera modules “are on the cusp of being commercialized and Pelican does software for that,” describing the firm as “one of the companies that has mastered this technology.”

In fact, Ilsoe confirmed, Nokia Growth Partners – the Finnish phone company’s venture-capital division – has had its metaphorical eye on Pelican Imaging since shortly after the company was founded, back in 2008. It’s unclear exactly how much has been invested in Pelican in this round.

Nonetheless, the move to broaden camera expertise dovetails well with Nokia’s push to highlight its Lumia Windows Phones’ photography abilities, particularly under the PureView brand. Last year, the company acquired camera processing tech from Scalado which allows components from multiple frames to be combined into a single photo.

Meanwhile, Nokia Growth Partners also holds investments in micro-optics specialist Heptagon, and sensor firm InVisage Technologies. The latter made headlines several years ago with its quantum-dot sensors that promise a roughly 4x increase in sharpness thanks to massively increased sensitivity to light compared to traditional CMOS.

Increasing light capture has been a central theme in Nokia’s photography push, beginning with the 808 PureView with its massive 41-megapixel sensor. That combined data from clusters of pixels to iron out visual glitches and boost accuracy in the final still, without producing massively unwieldy files. However, actually accommodating the sizable sensor in a more mainstream phone chassis is troublesome, and so Nokia has used other approaches – such as optical image stabilization using a suspended-lens system in the Lumia 920 – to try to broaden PureView’s impact.

The benefit of Pelican’s array technology, however, is that it offers increased 808 PureView-style light capture but without the comparative bulk. By combining data from multiple lenses, the company says users will be able to change focus after they take a photo, as well as capturing linear measurements, and scale and segment images.

[via My Nokia Blog]

The invite reads, “The Nokia Lumia story continues,” and to the left it reads, “See what’s next” in big bold letters that are slightly hidden, almost like a stereogram. We’re not sure what that specifically is all about, but we do know from the invite that Nokia will be showing off a new Lumia device at the event.

We’ve heard that the new smartphone will sport an aluminum outer shell complete with a waterproof nano coating from P2i, similar to that of the technology that we saw at CES back in January from the startup company. The phone is said to be codenamed “Catwalk,” although an official moniker for the phones is not yet known, nor are details imminent.

Apparently, the secret phone was at Mobile World Congress back in February, and only a handful of analysts were able to feast their eyes on the new toy, but solid details are yet to be revealed. There’s also the chance that they’ll release the Lumia 928 on Verizon, which we’ve been hearing about for some time now.

[via TechnoBuffalo]

The microphone in question is the TD V1.4 high amplitude microphone that was supposed to be an exclusive to Nokia, but somehow found its way into HTC’s inventory in the Netherlands. While the mic is exclusive to Nokia, the Dutch court ruled, however, that HTC can continue to use the microphones it purchased for its products because “they were purchased in good-faith”. The court also ruled that STMicroelectronics is restricted from providing certain microphones to other companies other than Nokia for a 10-month period.

Nokia attempted to recall the microphones already sold to HTC, however, it was unable to do so. Nonetheless, HTC has stated that once it has used up its supply of the microphones, it will “transition to improved microphone designs”. This new official statement from HTC does clear up the previous press release from Nokia, which stated that,

“The Amsterdam District Court has today granted Nokia’s request for a preliminary injunction against the supply to HTC of microphone components invented by and manufactured exclusively for Nokia.”

Many of us assumed the injunction was against the HTC One because nowhere in the press release was “STMicroelectronics” mentioned. Nokia also ended the press release with,

“Once again, Nokia calls on HTC to compete using its own innovations and to stop copying from Nokia.”

Nonetheless, HTC is in the clear now, as the court ruled that it’s “blameless” because it couldn’t have known that those microphones were exclusive to Nokia. However, HTC still has to deal with the other injunction Nokia filed against it in Germany. HTC plans on appealing the injunction and also plans on proving that the patents that it allegedly infringed on are all invalid. You’ll all be happy to know that the HTC One will not be delayed and will remain available worldwide. Be sure to check out our review of the HTC One here.

Hit the WhatsApp button and you can jump straight into your conversations; alternatively, there’s integration into the Asha 210′s phonebook, with the ability to start specific chats with people from there. Nokia also loads a YouTube app, throws in the SLAM easy photo transfer system we first saw last year on the Asha 205 “Facebook” phone, and the data-squeezing Nokia Xpress Browser.

Otherwise, there’s WiFi and a 2-megapixel camera, the latter using Nokia’s self-portrait feature which works around the absence of a front-facing camera by instead giving voice prompts to help you frame your face properly. There’s also Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, and other email account support.

Nokia claims up to 46 days battery life on the single-SIM version, while the dual-SIM Asha 210 will last for up to 24 days, the company claims. The latter can flick between its SIM cards without requiring a reboot, too.

The Asha 210 will go on sale in Q2 2013, priced from $72. It’ll be offered in yellow, cyan, black, magenta, and white.

This report comes from sources speaking with Bloomberg and have asked to remain anonymous as final negotiations will remain secret until next month. The Nokia Lumia 928 is said to be a re-tuning of the Nokia Lumia 920, a device Nokia has claimed as its hero smartphone through the beginning of 2013. This new device would work with a similar 4.5-inch touchscreen, 8 megapixel camera, and the ability to charge wirelessly.

The device that Nokia and Verizon are said to be using to solidify a deal between them will likely follow the metal body rumors reported several times since the international mobile device convention IFA held earlier this year in Barcelona. It was during that convention that Nokia revealed several new smartphones with low price points including the Lumia 520 and 720, both of which use Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 mobile operating system.

Have a peek at the timeline below for more appearances in the recent past of the device at the center of the deal being tipped here today. Will it be Nokia’s time to glow brightly amongst the otherwise midrange Windows Phone 8 devices working with the big red carrier? Or will this deal fizzle before the next wave of Windows Phone 8 devices arrive later this year?

The only thing that sets the two microphones apart is one digit. The Nokia Lumia 720′s number is 307, while the HTC One is 302. Nokia spoke with Windows Phone Central and stated that the numbers represent the manufacturing date of the microphones, and that the TD V1.4 label refers to Nokia’s exclusive code for the component. Nokia says that this isn’t a a patent issue with HTC, but a violation of the non-disclosure agreement between Nokia and the microphone’s manufacturer, ST Electronics.

Nokia sought an injunction against the HTC One because it says that HTC had no license to use the components. HTC issued an official statement regarding the injunction stating that it was disappointed in the decision and that it is “considering whether it will have any impact on our business” and that it “will explore alternative solutions immediately.” HTC is relying on its HTC One to save it from financial ruin, and this complication with Nokia, among its other complications with Nokia, isn’t making things easy on the company.

Last month, Nokia was granted a patent injunction in Germany against HTC over its power saving technology. The patent was over “Reduction of Power Consumption in a Mobile Station.” Luckily for HTC, the patent only affects 3 of its phones, the HTC Wildfire S, HTC Desire S, and HTC Rhyme, which are no longer imported into Germany. Hopefully HTC and Nokia are able to resolve these issues sooner rather than later. We’ll keep you posted if any new information comes up. Also, be sure to check out our reviews for both the HTC One and Nokia Lumia 720.

[via Engadget]

The physical similarities in design between Asha and Lumia have been increasing with Nokia’s more recent iterations, as the company plays on its distinctive color schemes. Asha phones are generally targeted at developing markets, but also the sort of low-cost prepay and SIM-free audiences who might currently be opting for a budget BlackBerry 7 handset.

That’s despite a history of well-esteemed QWERTY Nokia phones, with handsets like the E6 and the E7 finding favor for their tactile thumb-boards. Both ran Symbian, however, and came before Nokia’s transition to Windows Phone, an OS which has been poorly served by hardware keyboard devices.

Unfortunately, hopes that Nokia would deliver such a phone were all but dashed back at Mobile World Congress, when smartphone chief Jo Harlow told SlashGear that would-be users shouldn’t hold their breath for it. Though there remains a vocal group still asking for a physical keyboard, Harlow conceded, the actual size of that audience continues to shrink as touchscreen text-input improves.

For Nokia, that means the cost of developing a QWERTY Lumia is unlikely to see a return on actual device sales. Existing users of physical keyboard devices don’t necessarily upgrade to another phone with QWERTY, Harlow pointed out, and “we really don’t want to be on the wrong side of that movement.”

Nokia’s announcement of the new phone will be at 7am GMT (2am Eastern) on Wednesday, April 24.

However, we have to Nokia Sweden’s message with a grain of salt because this message isn’t coming directly from Instagram itself. It would make sense that Instagram would be bringing its app to Windows Phone 8, considering how the platform is gaining traction in the mobile market. While Windows Phone 8 is still miles and miles behind in popularity compared to Android or iOS, it’s still the 3rd most popular mobile platform.

Nokia deleted its Facebook comment shortly afterwards, likely because it spilled the beans on something that was supposed to remain a secret. This, however, isn’t the first time that Nokia accidentally let out details regarding Instagram for Windows Phone. Back in March, Nokia Sweden responded to one of its followers on Twitter saying that Instagram is currently in development for the Windows Phone platform.

Hopefully, Nokia Sweden is correct and Instagram is really on its way to Windows Phone users. Being not as popular as Android or iOS, Windows Phone always gets the short end of the stick when it comes to major apps. Earlier this month, Windows Phone 8 users were finally given the option to view their Netflix movies in 720p resolution. As Windows Phone 8 grows in popularity, developers will be more quick about bringing their apps to the platform. If you’re a fan of the Nokia Lumia line-up, check out our review of its latest smartphone, the Nokia Lumia 720.

[via WP Central]

Hardware

Cheap doesn’t always mean cheerful, though Nokia has some impressive form in the segment: its track record in squeezing the best margins out of its production lines has resulted in surprising gems like the Lumia 620. For the Lumia 520, you get a Snapdragon S4 dualcore running at 1GHz and 512MB of RAM, just like the 720, as well as 8GB of onboard storage and a microSD card slot to add to it.

Connectivity omits LTE – something we can forgive given the price – and tops out at dualband HSDPA (up to 21.1Mbps down, 5.76Mbps up, network depending); there’s also WiFi b/g/n and Bluetooth 3.0. No NFC, though, which means no tap-to-pair with wireless speakers, and there’s unsurprisingly no wireless charging option either. Nokia tells us it expects people to step up to the Lumia 720 if that’s something they’re keen on.

Nokia’s design lineage takes another mild deviation for the Lumia 520, with the interchangeable casing being a simple snap-on affair without the bevels of the 720 or the dual-colors of the 620. It feels plasticky and somewhat hollow to the tap, too, while the broader screen bezels mean that, despite having a mere 4-inch display (running at WVGA), the phone is only very slightly narrower than the 4.3-inch 720.

That’s not the only screen-related compromise. Nokia’s Clear Black technology hasn’t filtered down to this level yet, and so the Lumia 520 makes do with a regular LCD panel instead. The result is weaker viewing angles and less impressive outdoor visibility, though Windows Phone’s bold colors do their best to keep the UI clean. Best, though, is the extra-sensitive touchscreen, which means you can use the 520 while wearing gloves.

Software

Windows Phone 8 on the Lumia 520 differs little from what we saw on the Lumia 720, with identical performance courtesy of the same internal components. It remains a great OS for the first-time smartphone user, cleanly laid out, but with the Live Tiles – which can show upcoming calendar appointments, gallery previews, and those contacts with new updates on social media – allowing for enough flexibility for power-users missing traditional widgets.

The Nokia software suite is broadly the same, too, with a couple of changes to accommodate the 520′s hardware. Since there’s no digital compass – only A-GPS and Glonass – you don’t get the LiveSight augmented reality City Lens functionality baked into HERE Maps, though there’s still turn-by-turn navigation (with offline mapping support) for the UK and Ireland. Nokia Transit is also included.

At this price point, though, the biggest sell may well be Nokia Music. The free streaming playlists – complete with offline support for a limited number of playlists, unless you sign up to the subscription Music+ service – have real appeal for buyers on a budget. It makes even more sense when you consider that, in the UK, the Lumia 520 is being offered free on a £7.99 a month agreement, less than a Spotify premium subscription.

Camera

At 5-megapixels, the Lumia 520′s camera is unsurprisingly humble. There’s an f/2.4 lens but none of the Carl Zeiss optics that we know from more expensive Nokia phones, and cost cutting has meant the LED flash is omitted too. The 520 is also the only model in the company’s new line-up not to get a front-facing camera, which means no Skype video calls.

Just as we found with the Lumia 620′s 5-megapixel shooter, quality is mixed. Given sufficient natural light, the Lumia 520 does a reasonable job, though there’s plenty of noise and blur to be found when you view shots at their full 2592 x 1936 resolution. Low-light performance suffers, though, with noise and colors underwhelming.

As for video, that tops out at 720p HD, but the results aren’t too hot. Moving objects aren’t jerky but they do encounter some blur, while the audio quality is somewhat tinny.

A minor frustration was how the camera shortcut button works. As on all Windows Phones, holding down the dedicated key on the side of the Lumia 520 loads up the camera app – bypassing the lockscreen – but the budget Nokia proved a little slower to be ready for a shot than its Lumia 720 sibling. We also had some issues with the physical alignment of the button when clipping the battery cover back on.

Phone and Battery

Nokia rates the Lumia 520′s removable 1,430 mAh battery as good for up to 9.6hrs of 3G talk time or 360hrs of standby; your calls will be clear and strong, too, with no issues in audio quality that we encountered.

In typical use, with a mixture of push-email, some Nokia Music playback, internet browsing, Nokia Maps, and photography, the Lumia 520 comfortably made it through a full day and into a second before we needed to reach for the charger.

Wrap-Up

Things are getting tight in Nokia’s Windows Phone line-up, with increasingly small differentiators between different models for different price points. Although that makes for potential confusion in the consumer marketplace, Nokia tells us it pays dividends for Lumia’s enterprise adoption: one of the goals of the 520, for instance, was to make a device for those on the factory floor that runs the same OS as management staff use on their Lumia 820 and 920 phones, but cheap and resilient enough to survive the inevitable drops and scrapes of working life.

Does that mean the Lumia 520 isn’t intended for the rest of us? Some of the compromises – the absence of a front-facing camera, notably, and the mediocre hand-feel – do leave us leaning toward the Lumia 620. It may be slightly more expensive, but it looks and feels better, is more flexible, and while the screen is slightly smaller, it offers the same resolution along with the quality improvements of Clear Black.

If low-cost is your guiding star, though, the Lumia 520 is impressive for the price, and the value-add of Nokia’s software and services isn’t to be sniffed at either.

Hardware

Nokia’s familial design language is clear in the Lumia 720, and it’s one of the more pleasing handsets to look at and hold in the company’s range. Narrower sides but wider top and bottom bezels make for a phone that’s slimmer but longer than the Lumia 820 it most closely resembles, though the 720 shaves 0.9 mm off the depth (taking it down to 9 mm).

There’s a compromise involved in that, though, which is that while wireless charging is an option, it’s not baked into the Lumia 720 natively. Instead, you have to slot the phone into a secondary skin, which makes contact with a row of pin-connectors running along the lower section of the rear. Then, it’s compatible with any Qi-compliant wireless charger, including Nokia’s own accessories; unfortunately, Nokia didn’t have the adapter shell available for us to test.

Bare, it’s a sturdy unibody with a smooth, matte finish; the red of our review unit is particularly fetching, but Nokia will also offer the 720 in white, cyan, yellow, and black. A Micro SIM-tray on the upper edge means Nokia can keep the back cover fixed – which also means no removable battery – while on the right side there’s the usual volume rocker, power/lock key, and camera shortcut. A microUSB port is on the bottom edge, and finally another pop-out tray on the left for a microSD card slot (to add to the 8GB of internal storage).

Nokia has been pushing two screen technologies of late, Clear Black for better contrast and outdoor usability, and increased sensitivity for the touchscreen meaning it will work even when you’re wearing gloves. Both are present on the Lumia 720′s 4.3-inch panel, a bright and colorful screen let down only by its mediocre resolution. At WVGA, rather than 720p, you miss out on the smoothness we’ve seen on other, more expensive phones. Admittedly, the effect is diluted somewhat by the smaller size overall, but we’d still loved to have seen an HD screen.

Inside, Qualcomm’s 1GHz Snapdragon S4 chip holds court, paired with 512MB of memory. Nokia may have omitted wireless charging, but you still get quadband 21.1Mbps HSDPA, quadband GSM/EDGE, Bluetooth 3.0, WiFi b/g/n, and NFC. Above the display there’s a 1.3-megapixel camera with a wide-angle f/2.4 lens, while a 6.7-megapixel camera with f/1.9 Carl Zeiss optics is on the back, next to an LED flash. The latter will record 720p HD video, though not Full HD.

Software and Performance

Windows Phone 8 hasn’t deviated from what we last saw on a new Nokia, and so it’s all becoming familiar territory for both the firm and its users. The OS is undeniably approachable for first-time smartphone buyers, and while it doesn’t have widgets in the traditional sense, the Live Tiles system – where each of the resizable blocks can cycle through recent updates, media previews, upcoming events, new messages, and other information – can, with a little investment in setup time, be surprisingly rewarding. If you want to fill the homescreen with a grid of contact shortcuts, you can, or alternatively you can replicate an iOS-style layout with simple app buttons.

On top of that, Nokia throws in its own value-add, the growing suite of exclusive apps and services which the Finnish firm hopes will coax you away not only from Android or iPhone, but from other Windows Phone OEMs like HTC. Most notable are HERE Maps, HERE Drive, and Nokia Music, though there are a few tweaks along the way.

HERE Maps, for instance, now gets LiveSight and HERE Transit baked in, integrating the previously standalone City Lens and Nokia Transit technology within the one core app. LiveSight allows you to hold the Lumia 720 up and look “through” it at points of interest overlaid on top of a real-world view from the camera. It’s useful, particularly being able to zoom past buildings and see what’s behind them, if you’re in a new area, and the Nokia’s processor has no issues keeping up as you physically spin around to pan the camera.

HERE Transit, meanwhile, shifts the incredibly useful public transportation guidance into the core HERE Maps app, where it belonged all along. Nokia says it now has timetable data for more than 670 cities in 50 countries worldwide, with the ability to pin specific routes to the Windows Phone homescreen (and see, on a Live Tile, the next upcoming journey time).

What you don’t get is HERE Drive+, with global offline navigation. Instead, those in the UK will get UK and Ireland maps with offline support, but have to pay extra if they want navigation data for elsewhere in the world.

Nokia Music, meanwhile, continues to offer a compelling alternative for those shy of Spotify’s monthly subscription fee. Sign-up free, it offers 100 Mix Radio playlists that Nokia updates weekly, picking from a catalog of 22m tracks, the ability to create your own custom playlists triggered from an original “seed” track, and support for a limited number of offline playlists. The Nokia Music+ subscription service – an in-app upgrade – unlocks unlimited offline playback, as well as higher-quality audio on WiFi connections, and unlimited track-skips.

Last year we criticized Nokia’s Lumia 610 for coming to market with 256MB of RAM when the latest apps were calling for double that. The Lumia 720 makes a similar mistake – less serious initially, but likely to be no less frustrating over the course of a two-year agreement – with its 512MB looking short-sighted when apps demanding at least 1GB are starting to arrive in the Windows Phone Store.

Camera

Nokia’s 6.7-megapixel camera for the Lumia 720 uses a custom sensor and the company’s favorite Carl Zeiss optics, though falls short of PureView branding. Nonetheless, it’s a capable shooter, particularly in the sort of low-light settings we’ve praised PureView devices for previously.

So, you don’t get optical image stabilization, but you do get a camera that doesn’t lose its nerve when it comes to scenes with mixed bright and dark areas. There, the Lumia 720 leans toward maintaining detail in the low-light patches – though that can leave brighter scenes over-exposed – with results that belie the mid-range positioning of the phone. The LED flash is satisfactory, but we found we could often leave it switched off and rely on the camera’s inherent light-grabbing skills.

On the flip side, both photos and video (recorded at 720p maximum on both front and back cameras) have a tendency to introduce glare and lens-flare when you’re in brighter environments. Otherwise, video from the Lumia 720 looks solid, and the continuous auto-focus does a reasonable job at keeping your subject clear.

Our interest in front-facing cameras usually begins and ends with the odd Skype video call, but Nokia has made a specific play for those particularly keen to take self-portraits. As well as being equipped with a wide-angle lens, to fit more people in-shot, the Lumia 720 supports the new, wretchedly-named Glam Me app, which automatically enhances your selfies. Brightness, skin smoothness, blemishes and more are all ironed out, tweaked, and generally finessed; alternatively, you can apply one of several filters, with Instagram-like textures and color tones.

Phone and Battery Life

Nokia’s legacy for decent call quality continues with the Lumia 720, though the relevance of voice calls alone is perhaps questionable these days. Instead, we can’t help but feel that omitting LTE support was a missed opportunity.

The Lumia 720′s battery may be non-removable, but at 2,000 mAh it’s oversized for a 4.3-inch phone. That pays obvious dividends for runtimes: Nokia quotes up to 13.4hrs of talk time or up to 520hrs of standby (both on 3G), or alternatively 79hrs of music playback (locally-stored, not streaming).

In practice, with regular use – push email turned on, social networking use including Facebook and Twitter, some photography, music streaming, and HERE Maps – we easily made it through two days without having to reach for the microUSB charger. That’s almost enough for us to forgive the fact that wireless charging (or the kit needed to use it) isn’t bundled.

Wrap-Up

In some ways, the Lumia 720 is everything we’ve asked for from Nokia. It’s slickly designed and has superlative battery life, the camera out-performs rivals in the same price bracket, and the screen – though lower resolution than we like – is a nice compromise of size, outdoor usability, and general clarity.

Letting the show down are the absence of LTE and the potentially limiting 512MB of RAM. You could well say that the Lumia 720′s target audience won’t miss 4G, but there’s a growing cadre of people wanting higher-end features without a massive display, and they already know they want LTE. As 4G spreads, more and more people are going to expect it to on their phone. As for the RAM, that’s a more obvious drawback: games like Temple Run are quietly omitted from the Store, since they demand twice the memory the Nokia has.

It’s a frustrating flaw in what could’ve been a fantastic device, though the strengths in camera and battery life still make it a solid choice in the midrange.

According to the Financial Times, “those with knowledge of the company’s plans” say that Nokia is working on a handful of new devices for 2013, one of which is a larger phablet-style handset that’ll sport at least a 5-inch display, and will be added to Nokia’s Lumia lineup sometime this year to rival the Galaxy Note and Galaxy Note II.

This wouldn’t be too surprising, as it’s already known that Microsoft will be adding support for larger displays and 1080p resolutions to Windows Phone 8 at some point this year, and since Nokia’s a close partner with Microsoft, the company could be the first out of the gate with a phablet-style Windows Phone 8 device.

This will mark Nokia’s first move into the larger-display smartphone market, where it will be playing catch-up with the other handset manufacturers who have been making devices with larger screens for quite some time now. Will Nokia be able to make a splash with a 5-inch-or-larger Windows Phone 8 device?

[via Financial Times]

However, despite the losses, Nokia Lumia sales have hit a record high of 5.6 million in Q1 2013. This is up from 4.4 million during the previous quarter. In the same quarter last year, Nokia only sold two million Lumia smartphones, so that’s less than double of what they’re selling now. Since shipping their first Windows Phone device in November 2011, Nokia has just under 20 million Lumias.

While Nokia’s financial state certainly wasn’t ideal this quarter, it’s definitely better than what it was last year during this time, where the company experienced an operating loss of €1.34 billion ($1.75 billion), so the company is certainly succeeding at digging themselves out of a deep hole, even with less revenue coming in this quarter.

However, Nokia isn’t doing so well in North America. The company only shipped 400,000 devices during Q1 2013, which down 33% from the same time last year where they shipped 700,000 handsets. All in all, Nokia says that Lumia sales increased in all regions of the world in Q1 2013 except North America.