Nokia has unveiled its first two Windows Phone smartphones – the Lumia 800 and 710 – but neither device includes NFC technology among its features.   The two new phones run on the latest 7.5 version of Microsoft’s OS (also known as Mango) and are the first fruits of the tie-up between the Finnish handset vendor and Microsoft that was announced in February. However, the specification of neither device makes any mention of NFC although Nokia has been generally supportive of the technology. But Microsoft said last week it will add NFC to its OS but not until next year. Nokia has launched seven NFC-enabled handsets since February this year, a fact mentioned by Nokia CEO Stephen Elop during his presentation at the Nokia World event in which the new smartphones were unveiled. But all are based on the vendor's Symbian OS.  And those NFC announcements that have been made by Nokia recently have focused on its potential for content sharing which enables users to move multimedia content between handsets rather than mobile payments. The launch schedule from the two Lumia handsets involves a number of markets offering the handset during the rest of 2011 and then rollout in other markets including the US in 2012.

Otherwise the high-end Lumia 800 (pictured) has a 3.7-inch screen and is powered by a 1.4Ghz processor with hardware acceleration and a graphics processor. It also has HD video capability, 16GB of internal memory and access to 25GB of online storage via Microsoft’s SkyDrive. The Lumia 710 is a slightly more basic version but still features a 1.4Ghz processor. At the same event, Nokia also unveiled a range of featurephones targeted at emerging markets: the Nokia Asha 300, 303, 200 and 201.