Nokia Lumia 720 and Lumia 520 could be in the works

Nokia has already put their cards on the table as far as the high-end WP8 devices are concerned and come February, they will play their trump card, the Lumia 620, that will make a huge impact on the mid-range market. The phone only recently started selling in Thailand for around 8,250 Baht, which translates to an Indian pricing of Rs15,000. Now considering the HTC 8S is priced at 9,990 Baht (or Rs 18,200), we feel the 620 has a very good chance of launching at Rs16,000. This is roughly 20 percent cheaper than HTC’s mid-range offering, which is the only competitor right now, and is a lot better in terms of onboard storage, screen pixel density and the inclusion of a front facing camera.

Filling in the blanks

If this is true, then we have a very large gap in Nokia’s lineup between the Lumia 620 and the Lumia 820, where we feel a Lumia 720 fits in perfectly. Technically, the handset doesn’t exist right now so we spoke with Nokia, and not surprisingly they didn’t have a comment for us regarding their upcoming roadmap. So let’s do a little slice and dice and try and predict what the 720 could end up looking like in terms of features. A quick trip to the past tells us that Nokia has had WP handsets not too far apart in terms of pricing or specifications. Take a look at the Lumia 510, Lumia 610 and the Lumia 710, which don’t differ vastly in terms of specs. The Lumia 720 could very well be a shaved down Lumia 820 and this is what we feel the handset could end up equipped with -  

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• 4-inch TFT display with a resolution of 480 x 800
• Qualcomm MSM8227 dual-core @1.2GHz
• 1GB RAM
• 3G, Wi-Fi dual-band
• 8GB onboard storage with microSD card slot
• NFC, Wireless Charging
• 5MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics and 720p video recording
• Removeable panels

The rest of the specifications should be more or less similar to the Lumia 620 with the exception of maybe a slightly larger battery. A 4-inch screen seems like a very good possibility although it’s a tossup between AMOLED or sticking to LCD. We also feel that the camera could very well get the Carl Zeiss treatment while the video could still be limited to 720p.

Looking at the other end of the 620’s spectrum, we could have a possible Lumia 520 that will replace the Lumia 610 around the Rs11,000 price point. It would typically feature - 

• 3.8-inch TFT display with a resolution of 480 x 800
• Qualcomm S4 Play SoC (dual-core)
• 512MB RAM
• 3G, Wi-Fi
• 4GB onboard storage with (possibly ) no expansion 
• 5MP rear camera

Taking into consideration the minimum specifications set by Microsoft for Windows Phone 8, the Lumia 520 will feature a dual-core SoC from Qualcomm. Screen size will probably remain the same and so will the resolution. NFC most likely won’t make it to the list and neither would dual-band Wi-Fi. All WP8 devices are also required to have a minimum of 4GB of onboard storage so we can expect just that. Nokia may or may not include a microSD card slot. If they do, then the 4GB doesn’t sound all that bad. If not, then we hope they provide at least 8GB.

Both these handsets are merely our expectations at this point, but looking at how aggressively Nokia is pushing out their WP8 handsets, the Lumia 720 and the Lumia 520 may not be just in our heads. Perhaps they’re gearing up for a launch date slated for sometime during the first half of this year… hopefully.