Nokia Lumia 920 Features Windows Phone 8

Nokia today announced its new flagship Windows Phone 8, the Lumia 920, with a powerful PureView camera as the centerpiece.

The Nokia Lumia 920 has a 4.5-inch curved glass display with 1280-pixel-by-768-pixel resolution, a 1.5 GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor, 1GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. Nokia also announceda mid-range Lumia 820 model that has a 4.3-inch display and supports exchangeable shell designs with a shorter battery life and 8 GB storage.

Lumia 920 and 820 compared: Source NokiaBut specs are only part of the story for Nokia's new flagship. At a press conference in New York, Nokia focused on features, design, and technology that goes beyond raw performance.

Foremost is that PureView camera which, despite the name, doesn't have the same whopping 41-megapixel sensor found on Nokia's 808 PureView Symbian phone. The sensor in the Lumia 920 is a more typical 8.7 megapixels, but Nokia claims that the 920's camera captures five-to-ten times more light than other phone cameras, which makes it better at shooting photos indoors or in low lighting. (This was a major issue with Nokia's Lumia 800 and 900 phones, which struggled in those situations.) A 1.2-megapixel HD camera is up front.

The Lumia 920's camera also has so-called “floating-lens” technology for image stabilization. The floating lens is particularly beneficial for video, Nokia said, because it minimizes the erratic shaking found in some other smartphone cameras.

To take advantage of new screen-resolution possibilities in Windows Phone 8, the Lumia 920 has a “Pure Motion HD+” display. Nokia says the screen offers blur-free scrolling and enhancements to sunlight readability, so the phone can react to minimize sunlight glare. The screen also works through gloved fingers, so there's no need to buy special smartphone gloves.