Nokia Lumia 735 is first Windows Phone with UK Cortana beta
Nokia's dedicated selfie phone will launch on 2nd October and will come with the UK beta of Cortana pre-installed
Microsoft has today announced that the Lumia 735, first announced at IFA earlier this month, will be the first Windows Phone 8.1 device in the UK to come with a beta version of Cortana installed. Cortana is Microsoft’s digital personal assistant and functions in a similar way to Apple’s Siri, allowing you to use voice commands to take control of your phone and search the internet.
The phone will be released in the UK on 2nd October 2014, with contracts starting from £19.99-per-month according to Nokia. It will be available in a range of colours, including bright orange, bright green, grey and white.
As previously reported, the Lumia 735 is Nokia’s dedicated “selfie phone”, as it comes with a Full HD 5-megapixel front-facing camera to take snaps of friends and family. Nokia will also be releasing a new Lumia Selfie app for the phone to make the most of its wide-angle camera and focal length of 24mm. The rear-camera, meanwhile, has a 6.7-megapixel sensor.
“People are moving from using their front-facing camera to take a close up selfie or have a solo Skype call, to making it much more about where they are and what they are doing with their friends” said Conor Pierce, VP of Microsoft Devices for the UK and Ireland. “With the Lumia 735 we’re enabling people too simply and quickly capture and share more of what they want, it’s a great innovation and showcases the best of Microsoft experiences.”
The Lumia 735 will be powered by a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor running at 1.2GHz, but the main attraction (aside from the selfie camera) will no doubt be its 4.7in OLED display. Previous Lumia phones have all used LCD displays, so the Lumia 735 will be the first Windows Phone 8.1 device to use this type of panel technology, hopefully offering dramatically improved picture quality in the process. Nokia has said it will use 2.25D curved glass as well, giving it a similar design effect to the iPhone 6 and Samsung Galaxy Note 4.
The phone will have a 2,220mAh battery, which Nokia says should be able to keep you going throughout the day. Wireless charging will also be supported through the use of an optional shell case.