Nokia Lumia 625 landing in Australia from August

Nokia has announced the impending availability of the Lumia 625 Windows Phone in Australia, with the low-cost smartphone set to be available from late August.

The company confirmed today that the 4G-capable Lumia 625 will be "widely available" from Friday, 23 August through Allphones, Dick Smith, JB Hi-Fi and Harvey Norman retail stores. It will retail for $399 outright.

Telstra and Optus will also sell the Lumia 625 later in August, while Virgin Mobile will stock the smartphone from early September. Telco pricing has not yet been announced.

Nokia Australia’s managing director, Steve Lewis, said the Lumia 625's key feature is the large 4.7in screen.

"The Nokia Lumia 625 has our largest ever smartphone screen with 4G internet access and our latest apps. It's a handset with big personality, but happily for consumers a much smaller price tag."

"Our focus remains on offering choice and value for customers, by continuing to deliver new developments and experiences across our smartphone range, at every price point. This is a key point of difference for us."

Nokia officially announced the Lumia 625 overnight. The company says the 4.7in screen is the largest on any Nokia smartphone.

Most low-cost smartphones in this price range, including Nokia's previous Lumia 620, come with a far smaller screen. Its predecessor had a 3.8in touchscreen and lacked 4G connectivity.

The Nokia Lumia 625 will be powered by a 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor, has 512MB of RAM and comes with 8GB of internal memory. A microSD card slot allows users to expand storage.

Other features of the Lumia 625 include a 5-megapixel camera with LED flash and a front-facing VGA camera for video calls. However, the phone lacks NFC connectivity, a feature that Nokia has promoted heavily in many of its recent Windows Phone devices.

Despite being a low cost, budget smartphone, the Lumia 625 comes with many of the same range of Nokia-exclusive apps as higher priced models.

It features Nokia's new Smart Camera app, which first debuted on the flagship Lumia 925. The capture and edit tool comes with Best Shot, Action Shot and Motion Focus features.

The Lumia 625 also features the Cinemagraph app, and comes preloaded with HERE Maps turn-by-turn navigation, and the Nokia Music app.

The Nokia Lumia 625 will be available in Australia in white or black colour variants. Virgin Mobile will sell the white Lumia 625 with a bonus changeable orange shell, while other retailers will sell the black Lumia 625 with orange shell.