A couple of months ago, Nokia had invited journalists to the launch of the flagship Lumia 1020. The place was buzzing with news of the new launch and the company officials pretty proud of what they’d managed to achieve with he new smartphone. Last week, at Nokia World 2013, Abu Dhabi, there was similar emotions along with a strong hint of nostalgia. Nokia came up with a big line-up of products – six in all – probably for the last time as an independent company. Here’s a look at what might end up being the very last products from the tech giant before Microsoft takes over control.
There’s still hope!
Let’s start at the bottom of the price rung. Nokia upgraded its much-popular Asha series with three new phones – the Asha 500, Asha 502 and Asha 503. Designers have come up with a new ‘crystal clear’ design wherein they’ve enveloped the body with a transparent polycarbonate shell lending it more depth. While all three phones are designed similarly, the costliest of the three – the Nokia 503 – has the added advantage of having its 3-inch screen protected by Gorilla Glass. The phone will retail in the US at $99 (Rs 6,200 approx.) The cheapest of the lot, the Nokia Asha 300, will be available for almost Rs 2,000 less. While the phones, with their funky colours and new crystal clear design, look pretty attractive, chances are it’ll only be the younger, college-going crowd that will opt for the phones as their primary option. The proprietary Fastlane user interface that was introduced with the Nokia Asha 501 earlier this year has been upgraded for all three Asha phones. Nokia’s strategy of introducing these phones to make the company even more successful in the emerging markets will probably pan out well.
Light it up
The Lumia series of smartphones which are becoming increasingly popular by the day, have two new promising additions – the Lumia 1520, and the slightly cheaper, less spec-heavy Lumia 1320.
The Lumia 1520, with its 6-inch screen, looks exactly like a super-sized Lumia 800, which is not necessarily a bad thing considering it’s a pretty good-looking smartphone. The display is pretty massive and to leverage the increase in real estate the Lumia 1520 has a three-column Windows Live Tiles display, thus packing in more apps and widgets on the homescreen. It runs on one of the fastest processors, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor, needed to for its full-HD display and to boost its multitasking, heavy app-juggling abilities. The best part is that the handset features the impressive Pro Camera, which was first introduced in the Lumia 1020. The megapixels have been downsized to just 20, but have been built with wider sensors to capture pictures better in low-light conditions. The 1520 also has a 3,400mAh battery and supports wireless charging like its predecessors.
The Lumia 1320 is being marketed as a mid-budget option with its 720p HD display and a dual-core Snapdragon 400 processor with 1GB of RAM. In the imaging department too, it has been brought down a notch to a 5-megapixel camera. Although the display is as big as the Lumia 1520s’, the phone is designed a bit differently – it doesn’t have a curved glass display and has smoother edges instead. Packed with less powerful specs, the Lumia 1320 is an attempt to offer a handset slightly similar to the 1520 but at a cheaper price point. Both Lumia handsets look pretty slick. Despite the massive displays, the handsets don’t feel bulky or ungainly. A couple of brand new native apps such as Storyteller, Beamer hold much promise in making Lumia’s user experience better. The Storyteller app is the result of collaboration with the Nokia Here team. It basically combines your photos with native maps, so if you have visited say Kenya and zoom into it on the smartphone’s native map, it’ll show you all the pictures you’ve taken in Kenya. Beamer is a more like a catch-up app, which enables screen mirroring with its only USP being that you can mirror images to other devices remotely (through a website).
Keeping tabs
Introducing its first-ever tablet in its last big event, Nokia unveiled the Lumia 2520, a 10-inch tablet. The tablet runs on the latest version of Windows RT and sports a 6.7 megapixel rear camera built with Zeiss optics. It’s designed to enable a better multimedia experience with its 16:9 ratio, but personally I’m not a big fan to ‘tall’ designs i.e. it feels a bit ungainly to use in the portrait mode. And overall, with its magnetic cover, the tablet is a bit reminiscent of Microsoft’s Surface, which bombed in the market. Apart from the Proprietary Storyteller app that lets you curate your pictures and videos to create a story on a map, the tablet features Nokia Video Director, which lets you edit the videos you might have shot on the tablet or on any Lumia smartphone. The Lumia 2520 is priced at $499 in the US and it will be launched in India later next year.
Brownie points
What might bode well with all consumers is the fact that all Nokia phones will now feature a bunch of immensely popular apps that had been missing from the Windows Marketplace. The apps include the insanely popular WhatsApp, a free instant messaging service and Flipboard – a personal digital magazine. In a couple of weeks, users will also be able to use Instagram, with the company deciding to come aboard Windows. Better late than never, like they say.
mahananda.bohidar@thehindu.co.in