Check out our review of the Nokia Lumia Icon smartphone.
Rumors of a new Nokia phone headed to Verizon under the name of the Lumia 929 have been circulating for a while, but the device has never been announced. This week, the phone has shown up on Verizon’s website, thus taking a step closer to reality. However, this time it’s under a new name, the Lumia Icon. Confirmation the pair are one and the same comes when you view the webpage’s source, as the image URLs use the name Lumia 929.
Verizon’s Lumia Icon appears to be a more compact version of the recently released Lumia 1520, which is notable for being the first Windows Phone handset to come with a 1080p resolution screen and a quad-core processor. The Lumia Icon has a metal chassis covered in a polycarbonate body shell, measuring just under 10mm thick, and weighing a fairly heavy 166 grams.
The Lumia 1520’s 6-inch screen has been swapped out for a smaller 5-inch OLED display with Nokia’s ClearBlack technology, which still retains the 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution. A Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 quad-core processor is running the show, along with 2GB of RAM. There’s a total of 32GB internal memory onboard, and no sign of a MicroSD card slot.
Nokia has given the Icon a 20-megapixel PureView camera with optical image stabilization and a dual-LED flash, plus a 1.2-megapixel camera around the front. Other features include NFC, a 2420mAh battery, wireless charging, and 4G LTE connectivity. At the time of writing, the Verizon page shows the Lumia Icon costing a cool $777 regardless of whether you take a two-year contract or not. This won’t always be the case, and by the time it gets an official release, a $200 on-contract price seems probable.
With every last bean spilled regarding the Lumia Icon, it’s now down to Verizon to confirm when it’ll go on sale, along with the final price. We’ll update you when that news is official.
Updated on 01/23/2014 by Andy: A tweet from the @evleaks Twitter account indicates the Lumia Icon may be announced on either February 5 or March 5, but doesn’t say which one is more likely. The dates straddle Mobile World Congress, so if an international version of the Icon is coming, then the Verizon variant may not come until after the show.
Update on 01/21/2014 by Andy: Minutes after we published this article, the Lumia Icon page was removed from Verizon’s website. How long before the Icon goes official?
Article originally published on 01/21/2014