Nokia Lumia 920 is here: WP8 Apollo, wireless charging, PureView and 4.5in 'better than HD' display

+Martin James Sep. 5, 2012 at 15:48 More articles by Martin James

Nokia Lumia 920 is here: WP8 Apollo, wireless charging, PureView and 4.5in 'better than HD' display Nokia's Lumia revolution took another step forward with the launch of the Lumia 920, the new Windows Phone 8 Apollo range-topper unveiled at an event co-hosted by Microsoft in New York today.

Featuring Microsoft's latest OS evolution, Nokia's PureView imaging tech, the City Lens AR service, and wireless charging, Nokia reckons the Lumia 920 is “the most innovative smartphone in the world”.

Both the Lumia 920 and the lesser Lumia 820 (also announced today) have been widely leaked over the past couple of weeks, but while their unveiling was short of the “one more thing” levels of excitement, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop and head of devices Jo Harlow nonetheless painted a pretty impressive picture of the company's next-generation Windows Phones.

The Lumia 920, as expected, is the hero, boasting a polycarbonate shell (available in yellow, red, white, grey or black), a 4.5in PureMotion HD+ display, 8.7-megapixel PureView camera, and a dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor.

It may not have the 41 megapixels of the Nokia 808 PureView, but Nokia is still making a big deal of the camera smarts on board the Lumia 920. New image stabilisation technology “reacts to the minute movements in your hand to balance the lens”, Harlow told us, which effectively allows you to keep the shutter open for longer, increasing your photography options.

As for wireless charging, the leaks that have surfaced over the past couple of days have been right on the money, and sure enough you'll be able to charge up Nokia's new babies inductively via the Qi standard. Even without it, the Lumia 920 has an impressive 2,000mAh of battery juice to keep you going.

Nokia has always had a thing for services, and it's good to see it's managed to keep that focus even on Windows Phone.

And with the latest Lumia flagship, the on-board Nokia Maps service comes with full-fat offline maps and voice navigation out of the box, as well as the City Lens augmented reality service that you can kick into gear from the Maps app simply by lifting the handset up. Directions and nearby attractions will then be overlaid live on the screen.

The Lumia 920 features a new imaging tech called PureMotion HD+, which features “better than HD resolution” and the next generation of the company's ClearBlack tech which adjusts brightness and tone based on ambient light conditions.

The event also saw Microsoft's Joe Belfiore showing off some of Windows Phone 8 Apollo's top tricks, including taking the first ever public WP8 screenshot and posting it to Twitter. Not gimmicky at all, Joe...

We're still waiting on pricing and availability details, but will update as soon as we know more.

What about Apollo? Word on mass-storage?

"but while their unveiling was short of the “one more thing” levels of excitement"

TBF at this time of writing they havent actually finished presenting yet, who knows if there is going to be "one more thing"

So, the Lumia 820 comes with SD card support?!

Hasn't Nokia maps had full offline maps and voice navigation all along?

The coping with gloves bit is quite neat.

After some sleep I'm fairly certain these are not going to save Nokia in any big way.
Sure they can put another quarter in the life support machine, but that won't be enough.

I should add that I quite like the Lumia 920 - at least Nokia's part of the effort. We know nothing new about WP8.
But the fact that they decided to announce the devices without any launch schedule?
Big mistake. Not just because the SGS3 will gain more ground in the meantime. Not because the iPhone 5 will (probably) be in the shops first and gain loads and loads of ground. No:
Because every bit of positive innovation announced yesterday can now be dissected in detail to find a flaw, a weakness and arguments for the irrelevance.
"It's not really pureview"... "Nokia caught faking PureView videos"... Skydrive vs Dropbox...

etc etc... And this is before we know anything 'firm' about WP8. When all details about the new OS become known, every bit will be analysed and probed for weaknesses, then added to Nokia's failings.
And until all this is happening, iPhone 5 will have been hyped to the heavens; the SGS3 will have sold a gazillion times, and (possibly) the Note 2 also.

Meanwhile the Lumia 800 sits in shops costing as much as a HTC One S while the 820 is announced as a 'midranger'. The 900 costs as much as an SGS3 while the 920 is so close, and Elop calls it the most innovative phone EVER...
AND STILL nothing known about WP8. Nothing about what exactly WP7.8 will do to the old new Lumia 900.

I have no doubt iOS 6 and the new iPhone will have Cydia before the new Lumias are out.
Heck, the N9 has Jelly Bean and ICS, and HTC's HD2 will probably have WP8 before the first Lumia 920 box is ripped open.
I'm not talking about myself. But I believe N/MS killed the biggest chance they had. BY not having all the facts surrounding the "most innovative smartphone ever".
Samsung and Apple are leading in per model sales. Do MS/Nokia really think their launch strategies have nothing to do with that success?
Do they not know how much networks hate being bugged by punters who wanna know when product X launches? For how much?
Nokia's biggest, most as*-saving launch ever, and a day later no network, no blogger, no phonestore manager tell anyone anything about the devices that can't be put in one glib Reuters paragraph....
Okay, I'm exaggerating, but hey...

After some sleep I'm fairly certain these are not going to save Nokia in any big way.
Sure they can put another quarter in the life support machine, but that won't be enough.

I should add that I quite like the Lumia 920 - at least Nokia's part of the effort. We know nothing new about WP8.
But the fact that they decided to announce the devices without any launch schedule? 
Big mistake. Not just because the SGS3 will gain more ground in the meantime. Not because the iPhone 5 will (probably) be in the shops first and gain loads and loads of ground. No: 
Because every bit of positive innovation announced yesterday can now be dissected in detail to find a flaw, a weakness and arguments for the irrelevance.
"It's not really pureview"... "Nokia caught faking PureView videos"... Skydrive vs Dropbox...

etc etc... And this is before we know anything 'firm' about WP8. When all details about the new OS become known, every bit will be analysed and probed for weaknesses, then added to Nokia's failings.
And until all this is happening, iPhone 5 will have  been hyped to the heavens; the SGS3 will have sold a gazillion times, and (possibly) the Note 2 also.

Meanwhile the Lumia 800 sits in shops costing as much as a HTC One S while the 820 is announced as a 'midranger'. The 900 costs as much as an SGS3 while the 920 is so close, and Elop calls it the most innovative phone EVER... 
AND STILL nothing known about WP8. Nothing about what exactly WP7.8 will do to the old new Lumia 900.

I have no doubt iOS 6 and the new iPhone will have Cydia before the new Lumias are out.
Heck, the N9 has Jelly Bean and ICS, and HTC's HD2 will probably have WP8 before the first Lumia 920 box is ripped open.
I'm not talking about myself. But I believe N/MS killed the biggest chance they had. BY not having all the facts surrounding the "most innovative smartphone ever". 
Samsung and Apple are leading in per model sales. Do MS/Nokia really think their launch strategies have nothing to do with that success?
Do they not know how much networks hate being bugged by punters who wanna know when product X launches? For how much? 
Nokia's biggest, most as*-saving launch ever, and a day later no network, no blogger, no phonestore manager tell anyone anything about the devices that can't be put in one glib Reuters paragraph....
Okay, I'm exaggerating, but hey...

Yep...
Things like having to apologise hours after the presentation for faking video footage? OUCH
That is what'll stick in people's minds; that is what they'll talk about with friends.
People will disseminate negative impressions on average 5-10 times as often as positive ones
Psychology 1.01

Was thinking isn't Nokia World annual so they kind of had to have something to look at, but then saw it was in October last year rather than September and that might have been better again. Seems no compelling reason for it to have been now. And like you say Jan it can only harm sales of current models. Guess not much learnt on that front from the announcing symbian was finished, will you buy all these symbian handsets first though...

Video faking was big mistake, hard to trust the new video they put out now.

Think timing of wp8 launch is out of their control, that's another thing they lost when getting in bed with ms. Though maybe it'll mean the software isn't so much of a beta release when people get the phone.

I've been a massive Nokia fan for years and was even part of the Amazing Collective and am actually excited about this phone...
I was initially a bit concerned at the use of PureView on an 8MP camera-phone, and lack on xenon flash, but the videos have more than proved that that's counter-balanced...
Windows Phone 7 was flawed in that it required Zune, so as long as WP8 links via skydrive or live.com.. or whatever.. just NOT ZUNE!
my N8 is used constantly for podcasts, and I needed to use Zune to download a new podcast to the Lumia 800, so I ditched the phone (girlfriend is loving it though!!)

fingers crossed that the release date/price don't dent Nokia too much...
We all know that a lame feature will be enough to make iPhone 5 fans wet themselves, so good luck nokia!

hairychad, nothing wrong with your rant, except: all the points you make with regards to Apple are true(er) for Android, also.
The Android fans and Google loving tech bloggers are so taken with everything Android...
That aside, yep. Although, another point: we gadget freaks tend to misjudge the ordinary phone using public - amongst my real life colleagues and acquaintances are quite a few iPhone users. Not one of them is an Apple fan. Has any idea about Apple's history, couldn't spot Jobs in a lineup with Elop and Schmidt... It's a very small online community that vocally sustains the Apple vs PC and Apple vs Android thing.
Same way the British music press created Beatles vs Stones, Blur vs Oasis and so on and so on...
it sells papers, generates hits, and trolly characters find meaning that can be disseminated from mom\s basement.

Not sure that one line at the end of his post could count as a rant tbh.
Smell alone should give some clues as to which one is Jobs now.

Not sure that one line at the end of his post could count as a rant tbh.
Smell alone should give some clues as to which one is Jobs now.

hahaha oooops

I was an acorn fanboy while my dad was trying to get me onto PC's and Apples, then I went to PC when acorn died.
New iphones are good tbh, so it's a reasonable competition, but people are just buying it blinkered (like the Blur fans... spit). The fact everyone wanted an iphone when they weren't even 3G still annoys me, but that's a dated argument

my N8 can do almost anything the iphone can do and then more, except I don't have the fancy apps to do things quickly.. hopefully WP8 will bring that back. Most apps are just nice internet based front-ends anyway.
Nothing is selling me towards Android either.. it's equal to iphone, but there's nothing special in it for me. These new photo apps on the 920 just blow my mind.

Last edited by hairychad, Sep. 6, 2012 at 14:40

Agree. And without condescension: most people on whatever OS don't make full use of all 'smart' features. For someone who is obsessive about tweaking and testing every nook and cranny to try and lecture ordinary folks is just futile...

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