Nokia unveils Windows Phone 8 phones in Sydney

Nokia Australia has officially launched the Lumia 920 and Lumia 820 smartphones in Sydney, ahead of general availability next week.

Linked gallery: Photos: Nokia's Sydney Lumia launch

The Nokia Lumia 920 and Lumia 820 will be available in Australia on November 27 for $849 and $699 respectively.

Both phones are 4G-capable in Australia and run on Microsoft's newly launched Windows Phone 8 OS.

The 920 will be available in black, white, red and yellow from Telstra, and also in grey from major retailers. It will be available on a variety of Telstra business plans with pricing starting at $65 per month over 24 months, which includes unlimited text and 1GB of data.  

The Nokia Lumia 820 will be available in the same four colours from Vodafone in November, with Optus following in "early" December.

The Nokia Lumia 920 comes with a 4.5-inch HD touchscreen, a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 CPU (1.5GHz), 1GB RAM and 32GB of inbuilt flash memory.

The Lumia 820 makes do with a 4.3-inch display, 1GB RAM and 8GB of in-built storage. It is powered by the same Snapdragon S4 processor. 

Analysts see the new phones as Nokia's last chance to compete with fellow technology companies Apple and Samsung in the lucrative smartphone market.