Today at Mobile World Congress, Nokia launched the Lumia 610, a low-end Windows phone, roughly a year after announcing that it would discontinue development of it’s proprietary operating system Symbian, in an attempt to boost sales. Still, the company also announced a new Symbian phone, that can shoot 38-megapixel pictures.
The Lumia 610 uses a version of Windows Phone 7 that supports lower memory and processing requirements, and is Nokia has stated the phone would likely retail for $254, and be available in the second quarter of 2012. It’s geared toward younger users, with many preloaded social networking functions.
Nokia also announced its new camera imager that will first be included with its 808 PureView. The PureView technology will be launched on the Symbian OS, but as Nokia phases Symbian out, PureView is planned to be migrated over to Windows Phone 7. PureView accomodates 38-megapixel photos, which would allow users to pinpoint and zoom in on specific areas in images, and likewise print them out in large formats. The imager is adjustable, allowing 5 or 8-megapixel photos to be taken, and the phone features a Carl Zeiss lens.
Nokia opened its news conference at the Mobile World Congress by unveiling three new phones designed for developing countries. “We’re targeting the 3.2 billion people who don’t yet have a phone and 1.2 billion who have a phone but don’t have a data plan yet,” said Mary McDowell, executive vice president of mobile phones for Nokia. The three new feature phones are the Asha models 202, 203 and 302, all running on Windows Phone. Nokia declared they’d phase Symbian out at last years conference, switching to Windows, and Steve Elop, president and CEO of Nokia, stated, “one year later, we’ve changed the clock speed of Nokia, demonstrating we can rapidly execute our new strategy.”