Nokia is still in the forming stage of its transformation as a major smartphone manufacturer with its focus getting shifted to the Windows Phone ecosystem through its Lumia line of devices. The Finnish company did not announce any new smartphones at CTIA this week but has several new applications that are designed to make its lineup of Lumia smartphones stand out from the rest of the smartphone pack.
Buy the Nokia Lumia 900 starting at $49.
As of the moment, iOS and Android are still the undisputed leaders in the smartphone competition but the manner in which Nokia is making headway in the market is really impressive. With this, it is safe to assume that the strategic alliance between Nokia and software giant Microsoft is already bearing fruit given the strong sales performance of the Nokia Lumia 900 in US shores. In fact, despite getting released on a Sunday which also fell on a national holiday, the handset still managed to grab the first and third spots in the bestsellers’ list of an online retailer.
And to further solidify its position, the Finnish manufacturer launched several new apps which are all designed specifically for the Nokia Lumia 900. The more notable of these new applications is City Lens. This nifty, little app makes use of the camera of your handset to show you the venues, restaurant and other stores within your immediate surroundings. The app enables you to have the horizon scanned using the camera of the Nokia Lumia 900 and will then proceed to showing you quick reviews and star ratings of these points of interest.
Results are then organized according to distance, rating and category which gives the user of the handset an idea which of the places shown on the display of the handset. With this app running on your Nokia Lumia 900, you can actually have the luxury of taking a look at your surroundings through the use of your smartphone. Nokia is yet to formally release the City Lens app but an early version of the application can be downloaded from Beta Labs. And while waiting for City Lens to become available, we can always get reacquainted with the Nokia Lumia 900 by going through the specs sheet of the handset.
The addition of the Nokia Lumia 900 to the lineup of AT&T was made official back In January but finally managed to hit the shelves last month. The Windows Phone 7.5 Mango operating system of the handset draws power from the QualComm APQ8055 Snapdragon chipset of the device. The computing power needed by the Nokia Lumia 900 on the other hand is delivered by a Scorpion processor clocked at 1.4 GHz and a full gigabyte of RAM. The storage space of the handset, though non-expandable, stands at a very generous 16GB. Its display on the other hand is an AMOLED panel made from Gorilla Glass and has a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels. The handset also comes with a very impressive camera department composed of a rear 8MP shooter and a 1.3MP front-facer. Buy the Nokia Lumia 900 starting at $49.
