Nokia Launches Lumia 920: 8MP PureView, NFC, Wireless Charging, Windows Phone 8 | Hacker News Reader

Nokia Launches Lumia 920: 8MP PureView, NFC, Wireless Charging, Windows Phone 8

engadget.com

34 pointsSuraj-Sun52 comments

The Lumia 920 will arrive in pentaband LTE and HSPA+ variants and both are expected to ship "in selected markets" later this year.

"Later this year"?

I hate it when companies do this. Hate hate HATE it.

"Here's something awesome! Want it? OK, come back a few months from now and we'll sell you one. What? No, we can't tell you exactly when. We can't even tell you yet what it will cost. It'll be a few months, and cost some amount of money, that's all you need to know."

Then the few months pass, all the hype dies away, and when the device launches for real, nobody buys one.

I'm sure there's a marketing rationale for doing things this way, but I can't see it. What good is all this press attention now, when you can't actually take orders for the thing the press is raving about? When your ability to do so is so far away that you can't even give a specific date?

I'm going to guess at:

* Let the public markets know there's something good in the pipeline to keep the stock price as a decent level

* Let the distributors / carriers know (+ no worries about leaks)

* In some ways, it's better than the alternative of a leak, where all the marketing messages come from some crappy blurry cam mixed with a bunch of fake images

I agree it's a little risky from the consumer's POV. Bear in mind a couple things though:

* Even for consumers, when it gets released, they feel more positive towards a product they've heard of previously

* It's possible that the interest will be maintained over that period, although this is a stretch for anyone that isn't amazing at marketing.

When managers put "keeping the stock price at a decent level" over "selling a metric ton of our products," they've lost the game before even taking the field. Sigh.

Indeed, I will most likely be pre-ordering the new iPhone at some point next week. If this phone were going to be out any time soon I may have given it a second thought.

I agree this happens way more often than it should, but in this particular case, I think they were just trying to disrupt the Apple event and the buzz gathering around it. If they were confident in their devices they wouldn't need to do this, and they wouldn't need to use misleading marketing terms like PureView (when it's not PureView) and HD+ either.

4.5-inch PureMotion HD+ display, dual-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 CPU, 2,000mAh battery, NFC, integrated wireless charging and an 8-megapixel rear PureView camera capable of 1080p video. The display packs WXGA (1,280 x 768) resolution, is 25 percent brighter than the next best panel on the market and it's the fastest LCD that Nokia has ever shipped on a smartphone.

What...on Earth...does this all mean?!? Consumers don't care about any of this. I'm tech savvy and I still don't know why having a 8MP camera makes pictures look any better? Furthermore, I have no idea what my iPhone has in terms in Megapixels, so I have nothing to compare it to...

What's wrong with listing the specs? Should they rather say that it's magical and changes everything? Again?

Then this video is for you, there's also one comparison shot with a 'leading smartphone': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8_Z7_kJ3_g

The optical image stabilization is nothing short of revolutionary on this device. It enables both smooth video and low-light images. See the comparisons in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cimDfEIEiu0

The first video is just nonsense, but if that second one is accurate it shows just how game-changing this stuff could be. I would buy a phone for the image stabilization alone.

In the second video they use a van to record, not a bike, look at 0:27 glass reflection.

With a ban I could also get stable shots.

Trying to fool customers, they are so desperate.

It's a bit misleading. They used a rack with unstabilized and stabilized phone to film both versions at the same time. Both videos are filmed from the van, so the OIS is not fake. They showed this rack setup in their launch event.

You're reading Engadget. What did you expect? They live for specs.

I very much doubt the actual consumer pitch is going to be like this.

Fair point. Maybe it's because I'm not an avid mobile gamer, but what apps demand specs like this? I guess even in a technical discussion, I would expect to see some benchmarking like "2,000mAh battery provides 2.5h more hours of battery life, etc"

It is not easy to provide those numbers because there are no standards for battery tests. 2.5 hours of what? Browsing? Video playback? What level of brightness? In an area of weak signal or perfect signal?

I would say it's easier to provide numbers when there are no standards; just make up your own tests (see "Smoked by Windows Phone").

> Consumers don't care about any of this

But they do care - everything about a phone is what makes it. My GF doesn't are about the HP in my car, but she does care about how fast it goes when she presses the pedal, therefore, she does care about HP.

The specifications are not rendered moot because someone, like yourself, is too short minded to realize them...but unlike you, they know enough to keep their ignorance inside their head.

> I'm tech savvy and I still don't know why having a 8MP camera makes pictures look any better?

It means you need a slightly larger SD card, to store all the sensor noise.

I just love how they are calling it HD+, because it has a 1280x768 resolution instead of 1280x720. Was that really worth a whole new marketing term?

It think it's trying to head off customers who complain about the black bars around their 720p videos.

Sorry, you are NOT tech savvy if you don't know the pixel count of the phone you own.

Edit: i meant the camera mpx and not screen resolution. If you dont know tha your 8mpx camera phone has 8mpx camera, you are NOT tech savvy.

I write iOS apps for a living and found myself looking up the resolution of an iPhone yesterday - this is not something you know by heart. The raw pixel count is simply not relevant except for a small number of cases.

If you design for them it is, although I can't say the knowledge means you are or aren't a technical person in any way.

Rubbish. I'm by pretty much any measure tech savvy, and I simply don't care about what the pixel count of my phone is. Is it enough? Then job done. I'll spend my time caring about stuff that makes a difference to me.

I don't think most consumers know how much MPs are in the camera, nor have any idea what the number means in terms of picture quality. Hence this: http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/mpmyth.htm

My dad, mom and sis know what Mpx camera they have on their phones. And my mom and dad are no way close to being tech savvy. What the number means is a whole different question. But if you don't know that in your phone, you cannot begin to say that you are tech savvy.

So someone who's playing with node.js, EC2, Arduinos, etc. isn't tech savvy because they didn't read their phone's spec sheet when they bought it?

Most costumers don't yes. But tech savvy ones do.

A tech-savvy person probably knows that raw megapixel numbers are meaningless. A non-tech-savvy person probably got the number from the guy at Best Buy trying to make his commission.

I'm tech-savvy. I honestly couldn't tell you how many MP the camera in my iPhone has.

That's complete and utter bullshit.

I work on a smartphone OS for a living (Boot2Gecko) and yet, I have no idea what the pixel count on my Galaxy Nexus (my personal phone) is, or that of the last two phones I owned (Samsung Focus and HTC HD7). It's not something I care to know about my phone; all I care about is that it looks sharp.

My comment was not clear on what I meant by pixel count, but if you had read the parent, you would know that I was talking about the camera Mpx count and not screen resolution. I don't know the latter exactly either.

Can't say that I know the MP count on any of my current/past phones either, despite using the cameras quite frequently. Again, it's just not something that matters to me -- if I care about super high quality, I use my DSLR. Saying that you're not "tech savvy" if you don't know these things is just downright pretentious.

Why on earth aren't they announcing pricing and availability?

Leaking everything before the actual event happened was a huge mistake. No surprise during the event, no excitement, no clapping on features announcement... The event looked and sounded boring when what they were actually announcing was cool.

I'm in the market for a new phone to replace my 3 year old 3GS and I'm disappointed that they didn't have any availability announcements. Hopefully this information will be released soon.

The focus on the yellow phone is an unfortunate decision. The bright yellow creates extreme contrast with the black frame and background, and the white icons are barely visible.

None of the current theme colors are hard to read, even "pink" and "teal". I think in real life they're more careful about readability. And they're focusing on new colors because a lot of people were frustrated that there were only 2 (now 4) colors of the Lumia 900.

I suspect they'll look better in the flesh.

8 is enough megapixels, but will it have the proper flash of some of the pre-windows nokia models? That's the one thing I really miss from modern smartphones.

I really like the look of this phone. I've been an Android guy since I left my venerable Blackberry Bold 9000, but I find myself really attracted to the interface of WP7/8. With a phone of this build quality, it's enough to make me give it a shot for my next upgrade.

I have always liked the Lumia series. But its becoming a pain to decide to support all these new devices and operating systems for my small little app. Way too many of these OS versions and form factors to worry/think about.

Nokia's giving away Qt was the final sign of their move towards the road of no return. It was good for Qt though, since Nokia has no interest in it anymore and could only hinder any progress. Nokia is history now.

I believe it is hard to be successful if they able to compete on price. If they release this phone with same price as iPhone or Galaxy S, people will choose others.

The camera's selling point is the optical image stabilization which counters camera shake at low light, slow shutter shots. That sounds very good...

Wireless charging comes three years after Palm.

And it still remains to be seen if it sticks this time. Funny how "innovation" works like this.

what does 920 refer to?

The 900 was their last flagship Lumia device so, as this model is the next generation they've incremented the number.

Number of units they will sell.

The final number of units sold.

This baby is going to sell hundreds if not a thousand units.

i hope they sell millions

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