Nokia Announces Lumia 920 & 820 Running Windows Phone 8

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• Spivonious - Wednesday, September 5, 2012 - link

  Apple hasn't changed their design for 5 years. It's starting to look very dated.
  
  WP8 takes the best parts of WP7 and adds in lots of nice features. I'm sure these will be "world phones" and support all required bands.
  
  Rumors point to WP8 releasing alongside Win8, so that means October 26th. Carriers will most likely be AT&T and T-Mobile, being tthat those were Nokia's partners for Lumia 710/800/900.

• Moizy - Wednesday, September 5, 2012 - link

  I agree, Apple's design has received a lot of solid competition, it isn't heads and shoulders above everything anymore. But Apple's other great, not-as-noticed advantage is that at the end of their unveilings, they're able to say the phone or tablet will be available in two weeks, and two weeks later they have millions of units ready to ship. The Nexus 7 was available pretty soon after unveiling, to capitalize on the fervor. Can you imagine if Google took Nokia's approach from today, or Microsoft's approach from the Surface announcement, and the Nexus 7 was still forthcoming? If the phones were available in less than 2 months, I would imagine Nokia would want to let us know, especially if they have gotten their foot in the door at Verizon.
  
  Likely, they had two options: 1) inform of us of less than desirable availability dates, or 2) not broach the topic hoping it will be overlooked.

• Belard - Wednesday, September 5, 2012 - link

  They have to DO IT TODAY, to get some sales from possible iPhone5 buyers.
  
  Waiting 2~3 months for a new phone is not a big deal - unless your phone is dying (like mine). In another few weeks, Apple will be selling those iPhone5 and accessories out the ass until Christmas.
  
  WP8 devices will go un-noticed for the most part. Wait and see.
  
  Perhaps if Microsoft was a little bit smarter, they would release their OS/Product launchers in AUG rather than OCT... ahead of Apple and Christmas.

• Belard - Wednesday, September 5, 2012 - link

  Good point. But then again, the USA (were #1 - blah) is rarely the first with the latest tech. Japan and Europe are bigger phone markets.
  
  In those markets (okay, pretty much everywhere but here) - phones are sold to people, there ARE NO long-term contracts with the carriers.
  
  US Carriers have to validate the phones for their network, install some of their junk and put them in their own carrier-branded boxes and manuals.
  
  An article I read somewhere about the US phones (I think here). The iPhone comes in a very classy packaging, as did the KIN (tubes) - but in the USA, the carriers open these for you, stick in the sims, etc... so the customer doesn't get the initial "its mine, I opened it" experience.
  
  At best, the new Nokias will hit the USA in December, but would not be surprised for a Feb/March release... in time to go against blackberry 10 (yawn).
  
  RIM, Nokia, MS are doing their promos NOW, before the iPhone5 launch - which will be strong for the next 2-3 months.

• Belard - Wednesday, September 5, 2012 - link

  The 820 uses a 4.3-inch but its 800x480?! It should be the same 1280x720 screen... they can reserve their 720 for the low-res.
  
  Its the 820 that actually LOOKS cool and has more flexibility over the 920... but they mess it up with the screen.
  
  People didn't wet their pants over the 900... don't see that changing with the 920.

• Belard - Wednesday, September 5, 2012 - link

  Thinking about it.
  
  Too bad I have no faith in Windows8... I'd still want the 820 (but with the better screen)... I have no interests in the 920 style.
  
  My requirements are: 1280x720 / Nice feel / I like how it looks and feels. I liked the texture on the 900, but the shape didn't do it for me. So to me, I wouldn't buy either of these phones. Samsung has a new WP8 phone that is very RIM-like... Looks slick.
  
  The "preview" BB10 phone and its GUI is not all that impressive... and their current phones are so 2~4 years old.... oh yeah, because they are ALL 2~4 years old.
  
  RIM messed up big time. They are nose diving into the ground... Android 5.0 will be out before BB10 sees the light of day.

• Penti - Wednesday, September 5, 2012 - link

  Nokia only has been trying to kill their platform for about two years in order to wait for Windows Phone 8 and had most of their employees engage in manufacturing before Microsoft essentially stole the company without paying. Current Mango phones laughable and truly can't even run Microsoft's own Skype or for that matter Spotify without serious flaws and troubles that mostly stems from limitations Microsoft choose to enforce. Before the beginning of 2013 essentially no notable Windows Phone 8 devices will be out in the shops, and essentially for consumers it's about 2.5 years after Nokia was able to do multitouch properly themselves and have a proper smartphone OS with a developing platform (SDK) that evolved and was more mature then the WP7.X devices ever will be even with the 7.8/Tango update, and 2.5 years for Nokia to even compete against their ~2 year old products. If someone couldn't deliver here it was Microsoft, largely because they didn't need to, and was happy to kill the only system developed outside of North America instead.
  
  The "ecosystem" just isn't there for Microsoft and it won't be just because they will switch to an NT core either. I still remember how MeeGo got the Spotify App right away almost and it wasn't even released for WP when Mango was out so it was about 1.5 years (including some of the talks before the WP7 release) of bullshitting before an app came out that didn't even work properly. In real life it means they talked about apps running on Microsoft's system in early 2010 and didn't deliver an acceptable experience to date. If you had bought a WP7 device in October 21, 2010 you could run a buggy version of the Spotify app in Nov 7, 2011. If you bought a new Symbian device in Oct 2010, you can still enjoy a Spotify app that has been there from the beginning. Essentially meaning a device from two years ago ran the app better even in late 2010 then their high-end devices do today. Users will of course give up without caring about the underpinnings to begin with.
  
  RIM is a totally different company they can subside even with lower volumes. They might have been slow but at least they have a direction and the underpinnings shouldn't be useless with BB10. They just have to find the right nisch. Messaging-phones in Asia might not be it. RIM can handle sales at half their previous volumes, Nokia need to close shops in Finland, Romania, Hungary, Mexico and elsewhere even before dropping hundreds of millions in volume. Essentially wiping out the core of the company. That's some 20 000 jobs just since Elop took office over the mobile business. In total they have dropped some 25k jobs between June 2012 and 2011 in the whole of the Nokia group which includes the network business. They will essentially by the end of 2013 have gone from almost 140 000 employees down to maybe under 100 000 in just a couple of years. They can't possibly mess up as bad as Nokia under Nokia's new leadership. Elop is essentially trying to turn a 60 000 employee manufacturer that before him sold over 100 million smartphones a year (they are down to under 50M with no more then a few millions units being WP) into a 10,000 - 20,000 smartphone vendor with contract manufacturing. That isn't something you would call a success with a company that was making money the year and quarter before he was hired. It really doesn't matter for Nokia if Microsoft is successful with _their_ own strategy as they have already killed Symbian/MeeGo/Qt competition and only needs to sell a smaller number of units to be on the market maybe up to 20 million a year. For Nokia that is essentially worse then closing the whole company down. At least somebody can pick up the pieces in an all out collapse. Instead all they are really doing is turning out full touch Asha (Series 40) phones and pretending they are smartphones. They already make less then half of the revenue from mobile sales compared to Q4 2010. Nokia's own UX work might have been worth sticking to it even if it dragged on somewhat. At least they could deliver working software and sell stuff then. At least RIM has something to recover and build from if they succeed in giving BB10 some marketplace with the hundreds of millions of other devices and handful of other platforms. Even if RIM lays off the planned 5000 more people they still have over 10 000 people working on developing smartphones and services. Down from peak 20k. Nokia doesn't have that kind of development staff any more. Nokia cut Symbian, cut MeeGo, cut the Meltemi-project and everything they could build a future on and spent money on working with Microsoft instead despite the fact they have no control over it.

• Belard - Thursday, September 6, 2012 - link

  Yeah... I thought Meego was a pretty nice Phone OS. It was done a long time ago. I get the feeling that Nokia sales wouldn't have changed so much... other than having modern handsets in peoples hands faster, especially in the USA with the L900/N900.
  
  Technically under the hood, Meego is better than WP7.

• Penti - Thursday, September 6, 2012 - link

  Definitively and it's still a strong contender against WP8, QtMobility -- the platform API's on Qt is still very useful let's see what the Finns can do with it. At Jolla, Digia etc.
  
  It's not like the Symbian resources and skills are lost either, not the modern EKA2-core or the Qt-platform on top. Most of them have just been moved to Accenture, while many have been booted and changed careers, Nokia could still have had it as a active platform for years if they didn't undercut the trust. If they really wanted to kill their business it still seems wrong to do it without having something to release, a Compal made Lumia 800 wasn't it. WP7 will never get an SDK for native code and was a dead end if I have ever seen one. Maybe it was essentially out of North America but the Lumia devices has sold even less. As they turned into an made up none existing product essentially, a hardware platform was there the software platform was practically none existing. If the criticism was that they moved to slow it certainly went backwards. The Japanese might not have been interested in Symbian while it was open source though, but then again Sharp, Fujitsu etc aren't world mobile phone players
  
  Symbian as an OS and all the tools for it is certainly more modern and flexible then the base of WP7. Posix, Gstreamer, Qt was all there too and the primary environment since some time, some legacy stuff was left of course but it hardly killed it. When it comes to WP8, developing for Windows and the Phone still won't be the same thing. They can't bank on it.
  
  Still it can maybe gain some traction now that it supports C/C++ apps/games and is actually a platform you can port to. But it's still one out of at least 4 platforms (Android, iOS, BB10) not the dreamed up three platforms.
  
  When it comes to RIM they have pretty much showed that they can deliver with the Playbook and updated Playbook OS. If they can turn that to a phone platform it should still be around, and they always has the route to package Android apps for the platform and deliver via the appworld store too. Not a big fan of their earlier software at all, but their new software should have some appeal for technologists, nerds and be powerful enough to do what end users expect when it comes to using it, multimedia, games, browser and so on. HP/Palm never took the step to release a phone on WebOS 3.0 or to actually release the Pre 3, RIM will at least move along further then that. It's at least interesting to see technology develop rather then being killed. Marketing might have to take a different shape, think about it in reality the Kindle tablets aren't Android devices but rather forks without the Play store yet has sales in millions of units. Same with Nook. Should be some room in there. HP still might make something out of the Gram/WebOS unit and capitalize on that technology too. A a separate company maybe, if it attracts some talent. But that was a weird story to begin with as HP is a weird company since many years that can't even buy chairs for their employees and was essentially falling apart. Management is important here. Markets takes longer time to kill something. Technologies usually survives when companies themselves go under and is sold off, but not if it's mismanaged into oblivion. HP has kept several acquired technologies alive for decades they opted differently here.

• B3an - Friday, September 7, 2012 - link

  The 820 is a mid-range phone. You cant compare it to high-end phones with HD screens. Compared to the phones the 820 will be competing with, its much better than nearly all of them.
  
  This should be obvious to anyone, but then this is coming from Belard...