Nokia Lumia 625 Windows Phone (preview)

Nokia may be well behind the likes of Apple and Google when it comes to smartphone sales, but the Finnish giant's woes are certainly not due to a lack of handsets. Its latest effort is the Lumia 625, a low-cost Windows Phone with a large 4.7in screen.

A 4.7in screen is certainly nothing new in the smartphone world, but it is very new at this price point. Larger screen sizes are normally reserved for flagship phones like the HTC One and even Nokia's own Lumia 925. However, the Lumia 625 is a low-mid range device that will retail for $399 in Australia, so its big screen size is certainly noteworthy in this segment of the market.

Also noteworthy is the fact that the Lumia 625 comes with 4G connectivity, so it will be compatible with Telstra, Optus and Vodafone's 1800MHz LTE networks Down Under. 4G smartphones are mostly restricted to high-end handsets in Australia, so it's good to see the feature slowly trickling down to cheaper smartphones.

Nokia describes the Lumia 625 as an "accessibly priced 4G smartphone" that is "fun, fast and affordable". Therefore it's no surprise to see it has modest specifications. The 4.7in screen has a rather low resolution of 800x480, while the 5-megapixel camera and lack of NFC connectivity are also sacrifices you'll need to live with.

The Nokia Lumia 625 will be powered by a 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor, comes with 512MB of RAM and has 8GB of internal memory. A microSD card slot allows users to expand storage. The modest internals shouldn't be an issue in general use as the Windows Phone operating system is very efficient and smooth even with moderate hardware.

Despite being a lower cost 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 phone has a rear-facing 5-megapixel camera with LED flash and a front-facing VGA camera for video calls.

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 "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.

The 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.

A promotional video of the Nokia Lumia 625 can be viewed below.