Nokia launches Windows Phone with Lumia

Aimed at strengthening its position in the smartphone segment, Finnish handset giant Nokia today launched the Lumia 800 and the Lumia 710, the first devices from its partnership with software major Microsoft. The device will be available in the India by...

Aimed at strengthening its position in the smartphone segment, Finnish handset giant Nokia today launched the Lumia 800 and the Lumia 710, the first devices from its partnership with software major Microsoft.

While Nokia is yet to announce the pricing for India, the devices will be made available in the country by mid-December.

The Nokia Lumia 800 is a high-end device that comes with Floating glass Display, 8 megapixel camera with dual LED flash, and has 16GB internal user memory and 512 MB programme memory. Globally, it is priced at $580 (about ₹29,000).

The Lumia 710, on the other hand, has a 5MP camera with LED flash, 8GB storage capacity with 512 MB RAM, exchangeable back covers and is priced at $380 (about ₹19,000) internationally.

Both the touchscreen devices run on Windows Phone 7.5 -Mango operating System.

The two giants had announced a strategic partnership in February to jointly create mobile products and services.

'Our announcement today demonstrates remarkable progress that we have made as a company against our new strategy announced in February 2011,' Nokia India managing director D Shivakumar told reporters in New Delhi.

The Finnish manufacturer has been facing tough competition from Apple and Samsung in the smartphone market and has tied up with Microsoft to bring phones on its Windows operating System, while phasing out its own Symbian operating system gradually.

In an effort to differentiate its Windows Phone Mango phones from competition like HTC, which is likely to introduce phones based on the same platform, Nokia has included features such as Nokia Drive and Nokia Music with MixRadio.

Nokia Drive is a free turn-by-turn navigation application, while Nokia Music with MixRadio is a free, global, mobile music-streaming application that delivers hundreds of channels of locally-relevant music.

Nokia also unvieled a new look for its retail network. More than 5,000 of Nokia's top retail outlets selling the Lumia will be given a make-over.

'This will be one of the biggest consumer launch in the country in a longtime. The cost of the make-over will be shared between Nokia and the concerned dealer,' Shivakumar said.

He added that the company has trained 12,500 people to man the counters.