Higher-end 720 powered by a 1GHz dual-core chip.
Nokia's Lumia 520 and 720 smartphones have been outed through a regulatory filing, with details for both devices also emerging.
They surfaced on a regulatory filing in Indonesia, with the 520 expected to be the successor to the Lumia 510, while the 720 would naturally be the follow up to the Lumia 710. Both have said to have won certification from Indonesia's equivalent of the FCC due to the filing.
An unnamed source revealed purported details of the devices to My Nokia Blog. The Lumia 520 will apparently sport a 4-inch Super Sensitive touch screen, a 1 GHz dual-core processor, 512 MB of RAM, 8 GB of storage, a microSD card slot and a front-facing 5-megapixel camera. The smartphone will reportedly run on Windows Phone 8.
The higher-end 720 is said to feature a 4.3-inch screen that utilizes Nokia's ClearBlack display. It's powered by a 1 GHz dual-core chip, 512 MB of RAM, 8 GB of storage, a microSD card slot, a 6-megapixel rear camera and a front-facing 2-megapixel snapper. It'll also have Windows Phone 8 as its platform.
Nokia is expected to reveal both devices, as well as the EOS and Lumia 920's successor during the Mobile World Congress. The event begins February 25 and ends February 28.
2 reasons for this
1) WP is quite a bit more efficient with ram usage than Android
2) These are low end phones. How many low end Androids have more than 512MB of ram in them?
That said, I would love to see more 1-2GB phones on the market. Ram is so dirt cheap that it seems like it would be an obvious selling point with very little markup. I think we will start seeing a lot more ram in phones in 2014 when DDR4 becomes cheap as you can fit 4GB of DDR4 in the same physical space as 1GB of DDR2 that they are using in phones today.
Ive had my lumia 920 and memory is nowhere near an issue, 1GB seems like more than enough for this operating system, that runs smoothly on just about anything!
Is Windows just more efficient with it's RAM use/management or is this a potential drawback?
WP, like iOS, tombstones apps, leaving only requested services running in the background, saving RAM, but removing full multitasking.
Not all that many Androids have over 1GB of RAM either though.
Ive had my lumia 920 and memory is nowhere near an issue, 1GB seems like more than enough for this operating system, that runs smoothly on just about anything!
2 reasons for this
1) WP is quite a bit more efficient with ram usage than Android
2) These are low end phones. How many low end Androids have more than 512MB of ram in them?
That said, I would love to see more 1-2GB phones on the market. Ram is so dirt cheap that it seems like it would be an obvious selling point with very little markup. I think we will start seeing a lot more ram in phones in 2014 when DDR4 becomes cheap as you can fit 4GB of DDR4 in the same physical space as 1GB of DDR2 that they are using in phones today.
Same here, I am on a Lumia 920 and my only real complaint is that running GPS or Skype will kill the battery in no time, but even those run just fine with 1GB of ram. I thought that the lack of removable storage would be an issue, but other than not being able to hold my entire music collection on my phone it has not been a problem (and I am still able to load several CDs and podcasts on, so it is not a huge problem). Hopefully next gen phones will have enough onboard memory (64+GB) where removable storage is simply not needed and I can have all of my music, documents, and a few movies on there.
Oh, and they need to get Wallet working and supporting secure NFC payments! Almost every store I walk into has NFC payment capability now. If they do not get this working before my contract is up in 2 years then it will be a deal breaker. I love WP, but I love the idea of getting rid of my wallet even more!
Hopefully these new Lumias are available State side. We need more cheap WP8 devices to eat up the 'free with contract' Android market so that we can attract more software!
The article twice calls the 720 "higher end". My HTC one s, truly a mid to low end phone, has 1GB ram.
I just think that when you see articles like the other one on Tom's about unifying windows RT and windows phone 8 Apps so they can run on each platform interchangeably, more RAM might be useful. Especially when, as pointed out, RAM is so cheap these days.
I think it'll be 520=3.5 inch, 720=4-inch.
I may be wrong, but i'm just using logic...
Higher end than the 520.
Well the size is not all that matters. If 620 has smaller but better guality screen, the difference is ok. We just have to see how these compares to older Lumia WP8 phones.
WP7-8 was designed from the ground up to make far better use of its resources than the other mobile OSes out there. Thats partly why it was able to win the vast majority of the 'smoked by windows phone' tasks even though at the time (wp7.5) it had only a single core @ 1ghz or less on average and 512Mb RAM.
I've had several WP phones and now a Lumia 920 and the perceived lack of RAM has, so far, been a complete non-issue, same with its CPU which I believe is a dual core 1.5Ghz snapdragon. Its still able to do pretty much everything I've tried faster than my Nexus 7 (quad core 1.3Ghz tegra) and is a lot less app-crashy.
I keep on trying various android devices, but they simply don't feel as nice and the WP offerings.
Now, off-contract, sure the lower-end 5xx phones are good to have. But that's not what you were talking about. Anyway, for a budget smartphone, the 520 actually seems like a very good buy. I'm willing to bet it runs great, and it's got a microSD slot so no major woes about storage. It should do well overseas.