It might have been overshadowed by the Apple iPad keynote event, but yesterday Nokia had a pretty big product launch too. The tech company released its first ever phablet devices, as well as its first tablet.
The Windows Phone phablet smartphones were debuted at the Nokia World event held in Abu Dhabi, and marked the last high-profile product launch before the finalising of the sale of its assets to Microsoft. Two phablets were launched; the Nokia Lumia 1520 and Nokia Lumia 1320, and both devices have a huge 6-inch screen. They both run the Windows Phone OS, and developers said that the larger screen size would make them attractive to business users, as it’s now easier to use the touchscreen keyboards.
Both the Lumia 1520 and Lumia 1320 came packed with new apps. The Beamer app allows users to stream their phone’s contents onto an external screen, and the new Refocus feature will let you decide which parts of a photo you want to be in focus, and which you want to be blurred.
The new Windows RT tablet – named the Nokia Lumia 2520 – is a device with a 10-inch screen, and ships with a 4G data chip. This makes it the first Windows tablet enabled for 4G, as the Surface 2 didn’t have this feature. It’s got a 10 hour battery life – incidentally, the same as the recently announced iPad Air and iPad mini with Retina. The RT operating software means it runs a limited number of apps, so it could be priced fairly low.
Nokia’s product launches may not make as many waves in the tech news as the release of new iPads, but don’t ignore them completely. When the sale to Microsoft is completed, these two companies will definitely produce some exciting devices. Watch this space.