Will Lumia be the MAGIC phone?
Photo: Reuters
Nokia launched its first Widows smartphone in November last year in London at the Nokia World, in an attempt to regain its lost spot in a market dominated by Android and Apple. During the mega event, The Daily Star had the opportunity to speak with some Nokia officials on the new phone 'Nokia Lumia'. Nokia launched two Windows Mobile operating system based devices at the programme -- Nokia Lumia 800 and Nokia Lumia 710. "I believe that this is the first real Windows phone from the perspectives of hardware design, great camera and great screen," said Purnima Kochikar, vice president, Business Mobility of Nokia, while speaking about the device. If the marriage between the software and hardware do not work out it's not a phone, she said. She claims that Lumia is better than other Windows phones in the market in all aspects. She said that there are three prime features in the phone -- navigation support, music and video. The navigation system can take a person anywhere he/she wants to go with the help of Nokia maps. She further said Nokia's music store, with almost 16 million songs, can help a person to make his/her own mixed radio. Finally the phone can be used as TV as ESPN sports channel has been included with the phone, she added. The new device has such a beautiful screen that you can use it in daylight; the phone also comes with a better battery life. The applications or games available in the Windows mobile app store are very local as well as global too. You also have local music and navigation support in the phone, she said. Describing the device Paul Bryan, senior director of Product Management of Windows phone division of Nokia said the device can help people easily communicate with others such as your friends, family, and colleagues. He said you can quickly identify group of people with the phone. It can be a work group or anything. If you want to e-mail to your group you can do it easily, he said. You can continue your connectivity with the group through text messaging or chat as well, he said. Nokia has launched two different priced smartphone models so that different segment of people can afford the device, said its officials. Kochikar said, "We could have launched the Lumia 800 and people would have been happy with that. But we did not do that and launched another phone Lumia 710, that says that we really think about the affordability of people," she said. "Nokia always thinks about affordability." "In my personal opinion, Nokia provides the best experience irrespective of price of the devices. Nokia has always got its devices in affordable price." Lumia 710 is a great device and we will continue to innovate or figure out on how to make it affordable for the people, she said. For any device manufacturer it is a great challenge that all markets do not support all devices. Kochikar said it is one of the great challenges for the company like Nokia to produce devices for different markets. For example, she said on one side we have United States asking for Long Term Evolution (LTE-4th generation mobile technology) on the other hand we have countries like Bangladesh where 3G is still to come. So we have portfolio of devices that can match with the markets.
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