All good things seem to come in twos these days. Have you noticed that most of the main players in the mobile phone world are launching their new smartphones two at a time? No exception to this were Microsoft who announced at the IFA event in Berlin that they are shortly to add to the Lumia series of smartphones with two new mid-range mobile phones, the Lumia 830 and Lumia 730.
The Lumia 830 is positioned just below the flagship Lumia 930 in terms of specs and features and has been dubbed by Microsoft as the ‘affordable flagship’ smartphone. It shares many similarities in design with an aluminium frame and a curved rear and, of course, the trademark vivid colours of the Lumia handsets which include orange and green. The 830 is slim at just 8.5mm in depth and comes with a 5-inch IPS LCD screen and a resolution of 720 x 1280 pixels (which works out at 294 pixels per inch. )
The rear 10-megapixel camera features PureView technology and Carl Zeiss optics and boasts optical image stabilization, an LED flash and autofocus. It’s also capable of taking two identical shots of an image with and without the flash, by tweaking the flash-effect slider you can then choose exactly how much flash you want to use on your photo. The Lumia 830 also comes with an upgraded version of Lumia Camera with improved software such as a better burst shot mode and faster reaction times.
The Lumia 830 is powered by a Snapdragon 400 1.2GHz processor and 1GB of RAM. It has decent onboard memory at 16GB which can be increased up to 128GB thanks to the microSD slot. The2200 mAh battery can be charged wirelessly and offers up to 15 hours of talk time on 3G.
Microsoft’s new Lumia 730 supersedes the Nokia Lumia 720. Known as the ‘selfie phone’ the 730 comes with an impressive 5-megapixel wide-angled lens which has been specifically designed to produce better selfie shots and improve the quality of video calls. The rear camera on the Lumia 730 is a decent 6.7-megapixel shooter which can also be used for selfie taking due to a new app called the Lumia Selfie. The Selfie app uses face detection technology to help you take the best shot and uses beeps to guide you on the ideal position to hold your phone to take the photo. To further improve on those selfies, there’s a whole selection of editing options for making you look slimmer and more youthful too!
The Lumia 730 features a 4.7-inch screen and has a gloss finish with 4 choices of colour – black, white, red and green. Like the 830, the 730 comes with a quad-core Snapdragon 400 1.2GHz processor alongside 1GB of RAM. There’s 8GB of built-in memory and a similar sized battery to the 830.
Both the Lumia 830 and 730 smartphones are likely to be available to buy in the UK from the end of September.
