Nokia Lumia Icon for Verizon officially announced

After months of rumors and speculation, Nokia and Verizon have come together to announce the newest member of the Lumia family - the Nokia Lumia Icon. After months of skulking around under the guise of the Lumia 929, the handset has finally been made official, though the rumors have already given us a clear picture of what the device will have to offer.

Nokia has however retained one surprise, in which the Lumia icon sports a metal-made chassis, unlike the polycarbonate material used in most of the manufacturer's flagships. The back of the device however is made of polycarbonate, which is a design Nokia used on the Lumia 925. The handset weighs in at 166 grams and is 9.9mm thick, which means it is neither the thinnest or lightest handset in the market. These traits could be attributed to the powerful 20MP OIS (optical image stabilization) camera housed inside the device.

Like most of its top flagships, Nokia brings its PureView technology to the Icon with OIS, ZEISS optics and dual LED flash. You additionally get the professional manual controls offered by Nokia Camera. The snapper is, presumably, identical to the one found on the Lumia 1520, which is great news for the latter takes awesome pictures. The Nokia Lumia Icon can be set to save two files for each shot – a full-res 19MP image for cropping or editing and a scaled down 5MP image of size that is ideal for sharing online. Photography aces would be glad to know that the smartphone can also save in RAW (DNG) format for further post-processing.

Videos taken with the Nokia Lumia Icon should look and sound outstanding as well. Thanks to its four built-in microphones, the smartphone can capture high-quality audio even at very high volume levels. Nokia's software takes advantage of the sensor's large size by enabling pixelation-free zoom of up to 3x while recording videos.

The 5 inch display on the Lumia Icon is one of its finer selling points. It offers a resolution of 1080 by 1920 pixels, which results in a high-end 441 ppi pixel density. The display is super-sensitive like its other siblings, allowing you to use your Lumia Icon with gloves on, or even with long fingernails. Nokia has implemented its ClearBlack tech for improved outdoor visibility and a protective layer of curved Gorilla Glass 3 will keep your display safe from scratches.

Other specs on the Lumia Icon include a non-swappable 2420mAh battery, built-in wireless charging, and FM radio. You get NFC as well thanks to the secure element embedded in the phone's Nano SIM card.

The Lumia Icon is powered by a 2.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor with 2GB of RAM, which should offer stellar performance on this handset. There is 32GB of internal storage for your files, photos, music and video, but there is unfortunately no micro SD storage on offer.

Software

The Nokia Lumia Icon will ship with Windows Phone 8 GDR3 with Lumia Black. Its larger screen size gives it room for an extra column of Live tiles along with improved multitasking, screen orientation lock, driving mode, and more.

Nokia Lumia Black - Here's all you need to know The Lumia Black update brings lots of new features, improvements in imaging, app updates and new Nokia apps, like: Refocus, Beamer, Storyteller and Camera to the devices.

Nokia also has alot to offer the Lumia Icon, including free turn-by-turn navigation and offline maps with HERE Maps, the Nokia Mix streaming radio service that lets you store up to 12 hours of sweet tunes on your smartphone. Furthermore, there's Nokia Cinemagraph for making animated GIFs and Nokia Beamer for sharing your phone's screen through a web browser.

Windows Phone Update 3 (GDR3)- Here's all you need to know The latest version of Windows Phone update brings a few key improvements and enhancements to Windows Phone 8 devices. Here's all you need to know about Windows Phone Update 3 (GDR3)

The Nokia Lumia Icon will be available in the US through Verizon for $199.99 with a two-year contract and it is scheduled to launch on February 20. You can already pre-order the handset on the Microsoft retail store, where it will be available starting March 16 along with  a free Nokia Wireless charger.



source - Verizon | Microsoft | Nokia