Nokia Lumia 900 HSPA model, Lumia 610 detailed

Finnish phone manufacturer Nokia, has announced two new Windows Phone 7 smartphones at a press event at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona today (27 February 2012).

Although the Nokia Lumia 900 was announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2012, it didn’t officially have an HSPA model until today.

Previously Nokia had only confirmed a Long Term Evolution (LTE) model, which wasn’t likely to come to SA given that no mobile network has yet launched commercial LTE services.

The newly announced dual-band HSPA+ Lumia 900 will be capable of speeds of up to 42.2Mbps and will run on the same hardware as the LTE model, Nokia said.

Nokia also unveiled a new low-cost Windows Phone 7 device called the Nokia Lumia 610.

Prior to the device announcement, a Microsoft representative revealed at Nokia’s press conference that they would be dropping the minimum system requirements for Windows Phone 7.

Microsoft decreased the RAM requirements from 512MB to 256MB, and the processor requirements to the 800MHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 7×27.

Both the Nokia Lumia 900 and 610 are set to become available from Q2 2012, with the Lumia 900 getting an expected retail price of €480 before taxes and subsides, while the Lumia 610 is set to cost €189.