Microsoft launched the two Lumia smartphones announced earlier this year at IFA in Berlin. These are Lumia 730 and Lumia 830 which carry the Nokia brand before Microsoft dropped the name Nokia on their Lumia smartphones. Lumia 730 has been tagged by Microsoft as the selfie phone. And it does earn that tag by virtue of the camera technology on board. Selfies are a front camera thing, and Lumia 730 has a 5 megapixels front facing camera with wide angle and full HD output.
According to Microsoft Devices Product Manager Kingori Gitahi, wide-angle on the Lumia 730’s front facing camera means it will take wider selfies than most of the rivals in the high end. “The Lumia 730 has a wide angle selfie with the widest view angle among smartphones. At Kshs 30,000 its a market leader among rivals devices like the iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy S4 in the high end,” Kingori added.
This is why they also add the tag life un-cropped. The device is meant to give your selfies a wider view and can take a group selfie in one shot. The phone goes a step further by making this shot a full HD one, thus one of the clearest selfies out there. It also has removable back cover on top of the design borrowed from Lumia 920. This makes the battery removable, while under the removable polycarbonate shell one can access the microSD slot and also dual SIM capable. This is the highest it has been for a dual SIM phone on Windows.
Read extensive coverage of Lumia 830 and Lumia 730 here.
Lumia 830 is the bigger brother who’s design is borrowed from Lumia 930, the current 2014 flagship from Microsoft. It comes less beefier than the older sibling but with the same hot looks. It does borrow something from Lumia 1020 and that’s the design on the camera in the rear. Lumia 830 has an interesting twist that comes out in all Lumia devices of 2014 except Lumia 930, in that they all have a removable back cover irrespective of where in the food chain they stand or what design they carry. This means that the tag “Lumia is all about standing out” makes sense. You are able to define what colour the phone will carry by the changeable shells.
The shells are the ones that define the colour on Lumia phones and if you change one you have a different phone, Microsoft also brought in Techmart, their accessories partner to showcase the accessories available. For some time accessories was only a nice word to fly around at product launches but they weren’t exactly available. Techmart does now sell these accessories, so you will get all those shells to match your nail polish.
The two devices are already selling in Kenyan stores with a price of Kshs 45,000 (USD 498) for the Lumia 830 and Kshs 29,000 (USD 322) for the Lumia 730.
