Nokia CEO Stephen Elop has unveiled the Lumia smartphone line, which he described as "the first real Windows phone," as Bloomberg reported from today's London press event. With the tagline of "The Amazing Everyday," the company is tripling its typical marketing budget to launch the new phones.
As New Media Age notes, with the Lumia line, Nokia is highlighting "navigation, music and sports services as key differentiators in the already competitive Windows Phone device market."
The phones come with installed features and apps to enhance those services:
• For navigation, Nokia Drive and Maps help drivers, while the Nokia Live View augmented reality app identifies buildings by pointing the phone's camera at them;
• For music and entertainment, MixRadio streams remixes of full-length tracks without charge; Gigfinder, to located live music by preference, buy tickets and invite friends; and later this year, Nokia Lumia users will also gain the ability to create personalized channels from a global catalogue of millions of tracks. HD earphones by Monster also enhance listening.
• Sports content fans centers around the ESPN Sports Hub app which, subscription-free, streams sports news around the clock. The Windows Phone Mango live tiles also automatically update content, such as news headlines.
Nokia describes the "stunningly social" Nokia Lumia 800 (at right) as featuring
"head-turning design, vivid colors (cyan, magenta and black) and the best social and Internet performance, with one-touch social network access, easy grouping of contacts, integrated communication threads and Internet Explorer 9. It features a 3.7 inch AMOLED ClearBlack curved display blending seamlessly into the reduced body design, and a 1.4 GHz processor with hardware acceleration and a graphics processor. The Nokia Lumia 800 contains an instant-share camera experience based on leading Carl Zeiss optics, HD video playback, 16GB of internal user memory and 25GB of free SkyDrive storage for storing images and music. The estimated retail price for the Nokia Lumia 800 will be approximately 420 EUR (US$584), excluding taxes and subsidies."
Nokia's description for the lower-priced Lumia 710 (on the left): "The purposely built, no-nonsense Nokia Lumia 710 can be personalized with exchangeable back covers and thousands of apps to bring the Lumia experience to more people around the world. The Nokia Lumia 710 is designed for instant social & image sharing, and the best browsing experience with IE9. It is available in black and white with black, white, cyan, fuchsia and yellow back covers. With the same 1.4 GHz processor, hardware acceleration and graphics processor as the Nokia Lumia 800, the Nokia Lumia 710 delivers high performance at an affordable price. The estimated retail price for the Nokia Lumia 710 will be approximately 270 EUR (US$375), excluding taxes and subsidies."
Its press release added, "The Nokia Lumia 710 is scheduled to be available first in Hong Kong, India, Russia, Singapore and Taiwan toward the end of the year alongside the Nokia Lumia 800, before becoming available in further markets in early 2012. Nokia also announced its plans to introduce a portfolio of products into the US in early 2012 and into mainland China in the first half of 2012. In addition to the existing products, which include coverage for WCDMA and HSPA, Nokia also plans LTE and CDMA products to address specific local market requirements."
It's also a pivotal moment in the partnership between Microsoft and Nokia. As Microsoft's Windows team blogged today, "Six months ago, the Nokia/Microsoft partnership was just ink on paper. Today it’s two of the most impressive phones on the market and a roadmap for many more. We’re really proud of Nokia for fully committing to our partnership and for all of the hard work that their entire team is putting in to making the best smartphones in the world."
Below, Nokia designer Anton-Olof Fahlgren explains the thinking behind the Lumia 800:
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