Microsoft today on October 1, 2014 launched three new smartphones in India namely, Lumia 730, Lumia 830 and the Lumia 930 all of them running Windows Phone 8.1. According to Microsoft, they have activated 50 million Lumia devices till date and are very confident to do more in the coming future. Lumia line of smartphones which were neglected by consumers earlier because of the app ecosystem in Windows App Store is now not a problem, which we confirm from our side as well. 500 applications are added to the app store on a daily basis and there has been 400% increase in app downloads as stated by Microsoft at the event. Microsoft continues its trend on building successful ‘affordable’ smartphone range and have expanded their portfolio in mid range devices by launching Lumia 730 and Lumia 830 priced at INR 15299 and INR 28799 respectively into the same segment. Also Microsoft launched its high end flagship device Lumia 930 for INR 38649 which was a surprise at the event.
All the Lumia devices launched today runs on windows 8.1 out of the box with the denim update, supporting LTE. Additionally, Microsoft is offering promotional 1Tb of cloud storage on Onedrive for a period of 6 months which personally thinking is a plan to make people dependent on cloud storage and make more money.
Lumia 730
The so called budget smartphone, Lumia 730 is the next iteration Lumia 720 which claims to be the ultimate smartphone for skype calling and taking wide angle selfies. The smartphone has been optimized keeping the Skype utility in mind as it lets user switch from voice to video calls with just one tap. The Lumia 730 is powered by a 1.2 GHz Snapdragon quad-core processor and has a 4.7-inch HD OLED display. This is the first ‘selfie smartphone’ from Microsoft and has a 5MP wide angle front facing camera and 6.7 MP rear camera. The front camera performs very well , the pictures that we managed to click using the Lumia Selfie App were excellent. Lumia 730 will come in Green, Orange, Dark Grey, and White. All the colors except orange are in matte finish and orange color comes with glossy finish.
Lumia 830
The Lumia 830 is the thinnest and Lightest Lumia yet, the smartphone fits beautifully in pocket. Microsoft calls the metal-framed Nokia Lumia 830 “the affordable flagship” of the Nokia Lumia family. The smartphone is powered by a 1.2 GHz quad-core Snapdragon chipset with 1GB of RAM and also features a 10MP primary camera with Carl Zeiss lens and PureView technology. We managed to click a few pictures from the mighty Carl Zeiss lens and the the results were excellent, the vividness and color reproduction in the pictures were amazing. The device supports wireless charging and also features Nokia Rich Recording with three mics offering true 5.1 surround sound. Microsoft have included a bunch of new features called “Living Image” in which the context of the image comes to life and “Story Telling” which builds a story by combining all the pictures of a particular event.
The only disappointment of this smartphone is the 0.9MP front facing camera, with this the selfie obsessed consumer market might go against yolo against Microsoft as in the same price range there are other flagships offering better specifications running on Android. Lumia 830 will come in Bright Orange, White and Black color options.
Lumia 930
Lastly, the Lumia 930 which is the most beautiful Lumia smartphone with super impressive design and premium build quality. The device is the first smartphone that comes with metallic finish under the Lumia category. The smartphone is powered by a 2.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 SoC coupled with 2GB of RAM and features a 20-megapixel PureView camera which is backed up by optical image stabilization (OIS) and Carl Zeiss optics. The flagship device has bright AMOLED display with great outdoor visibility. The Lumia 930 will come in Bright Orange, Black and White color options and will began its sales from October 15, 2014.
