faiths hectically: Nokia announces Lumia 820, a 4.3-inch, LTE-running, budget-friendly Windows Phone 8 handset

Friday, September 7, 2012

Nokia announces Lumia 820, a 4.3-inch, LTE-running, budget-friendly Windows Phone 8 handset

No matter your budget, Nokia's got a Windows Phone 8 handset for you. While the Lumia 920 dominated today's press conference, the company's more modest Lumia 820 is planning to sneak in and capture the mid-range. The handset is packing the same 1.5Ghz dual-core Snapdragon S4 internals you'll find in the 920, along with 1GB RAM and a 4.3-inch display.

While the handset isn't unattractive, the design language of the 800 (and N9) that captured our hearts has been dumped in favor of something more symmetrical. The glass of its 800 x 480 ClearBlack OLED screen is flat rather than curved (poached by the 920) and the body's finish is a little more shinier than the previous generation of Nokia's polycarbonate.

Photography fans looking to get their hands on that PureView goodness will be disappointed to see that it's also been reserved for the flagship. Instead, this unit comes with the more familiar 8-megapixel Carl Zeiss optics we've seen before, but at least there's a front-facing VGA lens for video conferencing.

While the unit only has 8GB of on-board storage, it's packing microSD support (our guess would be up to 32GB, as per usual) and you'll also get an additional 7GB of storage on Microsoft's cloud service, Skydrive. The company's including a series of protective cases in a variety of colors, including a set that add bundle QI-compatible wireless charging to the handset -- at the cost of adding an extra 1mm to the handset's overall thickness.

It'll arrive in Red, Yellow, Grey, Cyan, Purple, White and Black, with separate LTE and HSPA+ variants shipping "later in the year," but Elop and co declined to give a specific announcement on availability or price today.

Gallery: Nokia Lumia 820