Handset maker Nokia took the wraps off its latest smartphone, the Lumia 625, which offers the largest display of any Lumia phone at 4.7 inches, and also includes 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) connectivity.
With an estimated retail price of 220 Euros ($290) before taxes and subsidies, the Lumia 625 is scheduled to launch in China, Europe, Asia Pacific, India, Middle East, Africa and Latin America in the third quarter of 2013. Nokia is currently fighting to re-establish itself as a leading smartphone brand and solidify the Windows Phone OS as the third major platform behind Google Android and Apple iOS.
The Lumia 625 also offers other innovations found in the recently announced flagship Lumia 1020 handset. These include a range of integrated camera applications like Smart Camera, which allows users to remove unwanted objects (photobombers?) from pictures, and Cinemagraph, which adds movement to still photos.
Running Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 operating system, the Lumia 625 also includes five changeable shells in different colors (orange, yellow, bright green, white and black), Xbox Live, Microsoft Office, and 7GB of online SkyDrive storage. In addition, a feature called Live Tiles updates direct to the home screen, and People Hub makes it possible to stay connected with friends and family.
“With our largest smartphone screen to date, the Nokia Lumia 625 is a perfect example of how Nokia is delivering leading smartphone innovation and experiences at every price point,” Jo Harlow, executive vice president of Nokia Smart Devices, said in a statement.
The Lumia 625 offers maps and location experiences from HERE, providing free maps, turn-by-turn navigation and public transport guidance, and has also teamed with Coloud to create “Boom” headphones that offer an integrated microphone and buttons for voice calls and music control.
Nokia Music provides unlimited streaming of ad-free mixes without registration or subscription, plus the ability to download mixes for listening offline with the handset. The smartphone also offers SD memory card support, allowing up to 64GB of additional content storage.
The company’s recent launch of the flagship Lumia 1020 took the competition for best smartphone camera to a new level—the smartphone features a 41-megapixel sensor; Nokia PureView technology, which stabilizes still images as well as video; and a dual-capture feature. The latter means the camera takes a high-resolution, 38-megapixel image, which can be edited and zoomed-in to, as well as a 5-megapixel picture that’s easy to share on social networks.
Nokia sold 7.4 million Lumia smartphones during its second quarter—a 32 percent year-on-year increase and its strongest Lumia sales tally to date. But the Finnish phone maker, once the reigning world leader in mobile phone sales, still posted a $298 million loss, coming in below analyst estimates.