Nokia Lumia 820 is announced with 4.3-inch screen

Nokia Lumia 820 was announced officially today during the press conference held together by Microsoft and the Finnish company. The smartphone is situated in the mid-range class, a notch below the Nokia Lumia 920, yet promises a Windows Phone 8 experience identical to what a high-end device is expected to deliver.

First thing you'll notice about the Nokia Lumia 820 is its colorful outfit and the unibody look of its construction. The smartphone will be available with red, yellow, grey, cyan, purple, white and black. interchangeable shells, some of which allow the device to be charged wirelessly.

The next thing that grabs the audience's attention is the 4.3-inch display enhanced with ClearBlack technology allowing identical outdoor readability to that of the Lumia 920's screen. Its resolution is 480 by 800 pixels, which is a bit underwhelming, yet still acceptable for a mid-range device. Moreover, the screen supports Super Sensitive touch technology, meaning that using some of the smartphone's features is possible even if the user is wearing gloves.

Underneath the hood of the Nokia Lumia 820 runs a dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor clocked at 1.5GHz paired with 1GB of RAM, which leads us to believe that performance won't be an issue with the smartphone, especially knowing how smoothly Windows Phone runs even on less capable hardware.

There is an 8-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics and dual LED flash on the smartphone's back, yet features like optical image stabilization and other PureView enhancements have been left out. Oh well, at least 1080p video can be captured at 30 frames per second. On the device's front resides a VGA camera for video chats and the occasional self-portrait.

Other notable features include the 1,650mAh battery and 8GB on-board storage, which can be expanded using a microSD memory card, and an additional 7GB of free SkyDrive storage are available out of the box. In case you are wondering, the smartphone will be available in both LTE and HSPA+ variants. Pricing and availability are to be announced.