The Nokia Lumia is yet to hit Indian shores, but it has already sent a wave of disappointment across the Indian market. According to the full specs listed on the Nokia India site, it looks like the Finnish flagship will not support the 4G/LTE band in India.
The Lumia 920 has already been released in many parts of the world with LTE support, but while most of those countries have implemented the FD-LTE standard, which runs on 2100 and 2600 MHz bands, India has chosen to adopt the TD-LTE form, which runs on the 2300 MHz band. As it turns out, TD-LTE is the least adopted LTE band and is therefore often overlooked by most phone manufacturers as a specification to include in their phones.
Currently, 4G LTE services in India are only available in Bengaluru, Kolkata, and Pune, being provided by Bharti Airtel, the country’s largest telecom operator. BSNL also offers 4G WiMAX services in some parts of the country. A recent estimate pegs the number of TD-LTE customers to grow to 5 million subscribers by the end of 2013.
While our European brethren get to enjoy their Lumia 920’s with full LTE capabilities, India is yet to see the release of Nokia’s flagship in the market. Earlier, the rumours suggested that the new generation Lumia devices (Lumia 920 and 820) will be slated for an early December launch, which got pushed to late December and now, we’re hearing that the phones might get a launch date that falls somewhere in the first week of January.
The Lumia 920 is the Windows Phone 8 flagship device from Nokia, and features the first ever optical image stabilization system in a phone camera, which seems to be the main feature of the device, along with the fact that it carries the signature Nokia build quality.
The WP8 OS device portfolio also includes the HTC Windows Phone 8X and 8S, the Nokia Lumia 920, 820, 620 along with the Samsung Ativ S, but so far, only the HTC Windows Phone 8X and 8S has been made available to the Indian buyer. There is no official word on when the Nokia Lumia 920 will be released to the Indian market, but we’re hoping that it would be soon.