In what has to be the most awkward way to realize the next flagship release has been released for sale before making an official announcement, multiple units of a still unannounced Nokia Lumia smartphone for Verizon Wireless have been listed for sale in China. The listings are offering the Nokia Lumia Icon 929 for sale for 3800 yuan, or $628 US.
Verizon Nokia Lumia Icon 929
Prior to the Chinese listings being found, the Icon had also been found for sale in Mexico for a similar price last December. At the time of its first discovery, it was thought that Verizon and Nokia were planning to launch the phone this past week, but when no launch came, it was assumed to be delayed once again even though it briefly appeared on its Testman testing site earlier this month with a “$777” price listing.
Now with the Chinese online listings for multiple units, the issue may not be of random units being filtered out of launch stock and popping up in random places, but of someone or multiple people selling stock clearly meant for a planned launch without permission, in which case Verizon has a serious inventory control issue with this specific phone.
The Lumia 929 Icon is supposed to be the successor to Verizon’s Nokia Lumia 928. It will be Nokia’s second Windows Phone 8 smartphone to ship with a 1080p display after the Lumia 1520 which was released at the end of last year. The Icon’s 1080p display is a 5-inch display with LTE connectivity (and GSM support, judging by the second image above), the same 20MP PureView rear camera from the 1520, quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of on-board memory, and a 2420 mAh sealed battery.
Verizon and Nokia have yet to respond to the myriad reports surrounding the discovery of the Chinese sale listings.
Update: A new video has surfaced on YouTube showing off the phone as purchased by a Vietnamese owner:
The phone is now expected to be launched sometime next month due to the purchase of Nokia’s Devices and Services division by Microsoft last year.
