Nokia Lumia 920 Hands-On [video]

The Nokia Lumia 920 was announced today, the Finnish manufacturer’s first Windows Phone 8 device, along with the Lumia 820.

The camera is what interests me most so let me talk about that first. It uses PureView tech but it’s not the same as what’s behind the Symbian-powered Nokia 808 PureView. The camera specs are 8 Megapixel Camera, F/2.0 aperture (lowest on any ‘smartphone’ so far), with a BSI sensor, 1/1.4” sensor size and a floating lens. The back-side illuminated sensors (BSI) is the same thing we’ve heard before on the iPhone and some other phone cameras. The large sensor compliments the 8 Megapixels to get low noise, and the new “Floating lens” mechanical image stabilization sounds like it’ll be pretty impressive. We werent able to really test out the camera or the new filters (SmartShot, Cinemagraph and Panorama) just yet unfortunately, since it was Prototype Hardware.

Powering everything, you have a dual core 1.5 Ghz Snapdragon S4 processor (like on the US HTC One X and Galaxy S3), a supposedly ‘better than HD’ 1280 x 768 LCD display, the aforementioned PureView 8 Megapixel camera, NFC, all powered by a 2000 mAh battery, and features wireless charging to boot. It’s powered by Windows Phone 8 as we mentioned before, but unfortunately we werent allowed to check out much of the OS. Atleast the hardware looks pretty good?

There’s a polycarbonate chassis and the same familiar Windows Phone key placements and rounded edges of previous Lumia flagships. The 4.5 inch screen is curved like the Lumia 800 before it and looks fantastic, but instead of the phone body being matt like previous Lumias, it’s glossy and kind of a fingerprint magnet. It’s light enough to hold and feels solid, like a flagship phone should.

Nokia has not shared release dates or pricing just yet, but I’d imagine they’ll do that once Microsoft ‘properly’ announces/launches Windows Phone 8. Here’s a quick hands-on and introduction by the Nokia Germany team here in Berlin to give you a better idea.