Nokia design patent finally reveals mysterious Phi Windows Phone 8 device

The Nokia Phi as seen by the USPTO

Adding to the earlier news about the new Nokia phone, codename ‘Phi’ coming to AT&T, the site Liveside have managed to uncover a new patent filing that appears to reveal the new device in submitted drawings.

At first brush, the device looks a lot like the Lumia 800 and 900 but upon closer inspection, it matches nearly to the ‘t’ the previous images of the Phi that were leaked out earlier this month.

One immediate item that we noticed is the screen is not curved. Although the Verge this morning mentioned this as a feature, from the images and bezel leak that we’ve seen, curved glass does not appear to be a feature and these drawings confirm that notion.

The design of the phone does have a curved back though, more so than the Lumia 900, which is quite flat on both sides of the device. This is presumably both a design choice and so it can possibly incorporate a larger battery needed to power the massive 4.7” display.

Nokia Phi versus Lumia 900 and Lumia 800

Dual speakers are on the bottom, a change from the single speaker grill of the Lumia 800 and 900. Of course phones often use ‘faux’ speaker grills for added parity in design so it will be interesting to see if these grills are actually for dual speakers or not. Knowing Nokia, we wouldn’t put it past them to have a fantastic sound system on this flagship phone.

Button layout appears to be the same as the Lumia 900 with all keys on the right hand side, although spacing does look to be greater here with the camera button pushed further down and what appears to be a slightly larger ‘gap’ between the power and volume controls.

Rounding out the design sheet is a micro USB connector on the bottom, right in the middle with a 3.5mm headphone jack its polar opposite on top. In addition what appears to be a dual microSIM/microSD card tray is present on the upper left corner of the device—it would make sense to have this as a single drawer to reduce costs and for design simplicity. 

The Noka Lumia 'Phi' (its marketing name yet to be revealed) is expected to feature the following specifications:

  • 4.65" AMOLED screen + ClearBlack, 1280x720
  • 4G LTE
  • microSD, NFC
  • Qualcomm Dual-core CPU ~1.5GHz
  • polycarbonate, unibody design

What do people think? Sound off in comments.

Source USPTO; via Liveside

Daniel Rubino
Editor-in-chief

Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central. He is also the head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007, when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and watches. He has been reviewing laptops since 2015 and is particularly fond of 2-in-1 convertibles, ARM processors, new form factors, and thin-and-light PCs. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, watched people sleep (for medical purposes!), and ran the projectors at movie theaters because it was fun.