BY: MOYAGABO MAAKE, Lumia 800 and Lumia 710 have been developed through the Finnish cellphone maker’s partnership with Microsoft announced in February this year.Nokia, the Finnish cellphone maker, on Wednesday unveiled its first Windows-based smartphones, the Lumia 800 and a cheaper version, the Lumia 710, which could give Research in Motion’s (RIM) BlackBerry a run for its money — but only expect the Lumia to arrive in South Africa next year. In the keynote address at the Nokia World event in London, taking place on Wednesday and Thursday, Kevin Shields, senior vice-president of programme and product management, said Nokia’s partnership with Microsoft announced in February this year had borne fruit just eight months later with the launch of the Windows Phone series.A survey by YouGov, the British research company, conducted after RIM’s recent services blackout, found that 57% of BlackBerry users were considering sticking with the brand, compared with the pre-blackout figure of 69%. Most respondents said they would opt for the Apple iPhone, with only 14% opting for Nokia. The Lumia 800 features one-touch social network access, integrated communication threads and Internet Explorer 9. It has a 3.7-inch touchscreen display and a 1.4GHz processor with hardware acceleration and a graphics processor. It also has an eight-megapixel instant-share camera based on Carl Zeiss optics, high-definition video playback, 16GB of internal user memory and 25GB of free SkyDrive storage for images and music. Its estimated retail price will be about €420 (R4600).The comparable BlackBerry Torch 9800, which retailed at about R7400 on its launch last year, only offers a 3.2-inch display, a five-megapixel camera and 512MB onboard memory with a 4GB memory card. Source: BusinessDay, Image: flickr.com
