Along with the Lumia 1520 and the 1320, Nokia also took the opportunity to announce its first ever Windows based tablet at Nokia World, yesterday, The Nokia 2520 as it is known can be termed a distant successor to the Nokia Booklet 3G – the only other device that is known to have run a desktop class Operating System on Nokia hardware. That product was announced long back, though – in 2009.
The announcement of the Lumia 2520 interestingly came hours before Apple was to announce its freshened up iPad line up – the iPad Air and the iPad Mini with Retina Display. The Lumia 2520 is also a strange move from Nokia which in a few months time is all set to be taken over by Microsoft – which owns and sells a competing product – the Surface line up of tablets. It is also interesting to see Nokia entering a market which has seen many (in)famous exits by the likes of Asus and Samsung in select markets. Let’s take a quick look at the Lumia 2520 now
Display & Processor
The Lumia 2520 boasts of a 10.1 inch full HD panel which while being great, pales in comparison to some of the newer Android powered competition out there. Even the just announced iPad Mini 2 gets a higher resolution panel and so does the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet announced yesterday here in India. The display also gets Gorilla Glass 2 coating for added durability and scratchproofness. Powering the tablet is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 SoC which houses that famous 2.2 Ghz quad core chip. This is the same chip powering many of today’s top smartphones and Nokia’s own Lumia 1520 phablet. This processor is supported with 2 GB of RAM. There is 32 GB of internal storage – and for those of you who find that too low, there is the option to add micro SD cards for memory expansion.
Software and Optics
Like mentioned earlier in this post, the Lumia 2520 runs Windows 8.1 RT, the latest version of Windows for tablets. It comes preloaded with Microsoft Outlook and Office suite along with HERE Maps and of course, Nokia Music. On the camera front, the device gets a 6.7 megapixel unit with ZEISS optics and a f1.9 aperture. There is a front facing 2 megapixel camera as well. The 2520 can also of course capture videos in HD.
Connectivity
The Lumia 2520 offers comprehensive 3G and 4G LTE and GSM support and can be used in pretty much every country on the planet. Other options include support for NFC, A-GPS+GLONASS, WLAN 802.11 a/b/g/n, microUSB 3.0 and BT 4.0 LE.
All this hardware is powered by an 8000 mAH battery that according to Nokia offers over 10 hours of life even whilst playing videos! Nokia has also introduced a keyboard accessory called the Nokia Power Keyboard which offers the user a full physical keybaord and touchpad experience. This accessory also doubles up as a case for the tablet and houses an additional battery that can offer up to five hours of extra usage time – effectivelly increasing the battery life to an astonishing 15 hours. It also gets two USB ports where you can add in additional accesories
Availability
The Lumia 2520 is expected to be made available soon in the US, UK and Finland followed by a global rollout. The initial price minus taxes and subsidies is USD 499.
