New Delhi, July 7 – At BUILD 2014, Microsoft announced that the Nokia Lumia 930 for the global market including India. The smartphone was supposedly to go on sale in June in India, but that has not happened. Amidst the radio silence from Microsoft, there is some good news as the phone has appeared on online retail sites with a ‘coming soon’ tag.
The Lumia 930 is Microsoft’s flagship smartphone for the first half of 2014. Ironically, in India it will be launched in the second half, but in terms of specifications and design it represents the absolute pinnacle of the Windows Phone platform.
Interestingly, it’s also the international variant of the Nokia Lumia ICON, which was an exclusive in the US with the Verizon network. However, the differences end with the name as in terms of design and specs it’s almost identical.
It flaunts an aluminum exoskeleton with a polycarbonate back much like the Lumia 925. Its headlining feature is its 20-megapixel camera with optical image stabilisation that also features Nokia’s acclaimed PureView oversampling technology that allows for lossless digital zoom.This effect is not as extreme as the 41-megapixel monster, the Lumia 1020, but is similar to the 6-inch phablet the Lumia 1520.
Apart from the camera, there is a full-HD 1080p AMOLED screen with the Clear Black filter that Nokia phones are known for. It is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 quad-core CPU clocked at 2.2GHz along with 2GB of RAM. It also has 32GB of internal memory and for graphics there is the Adreno 330 GPU.
On the front the phone has a 1.2-meagpixel camera with a wide-angle lens. Other nifty features of the phone include Dolby Digital Plus sound enhancement, multiple dynamic microphones for crystal clear audio capture, Qi wireless charging, and a 2,430mAh battery. The phone runs on Windows Phone 8.1 and has already started appearing in European markets.
The price of the phone is unknown, but it could be priced close to Rs.40,000 if not more considering it will be the new Windows Phone flagship. While, its specs may not match up to modern Android flagships, the way it the Windows Phone OS is optimised the user experience is generally superior to Android phones.
If one adds the camera technology and the industrial design that Nokia brings to the table then it will be an expensive purchase. The phone is currently listed on Flipkart and Infibeam with a coming soon tag.
-INDIA TODAY
