14 DAY TRIAL // They say the Lumia brand is almost dead, with an announcement from Microsoft more or less imminent, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that the company has never imagined what the future of its mobile platform could look like.
And an update to the flagship Lumia 950 was part of this future, with a new photo coming from Chinese forum Baidu providing us with a glimpse at a new unreleased model.
The alleged Lumia 960 is an upgrade to the Lumia 950, the company’s flagship phone running Windows 10 Mobile and released with much fanfare in the fall of 2015.
As you can see in this photo, the Lumia 960 looks very similar to its predecessor, though a number of upgrades can indeed be spotted. The device was supposed to launch with a triple LED flash, a 20-megapixel PureView camera, a dual front speaker (which means the device would have offered stereo sound), as well as a Snapdragon 820 processor.
Snapdragon 820
At the time of developing the phone, the Snapdragon 820 was the best of the best in terms of mobile processors, so Microsoft wanted the Lumia 960 to rival high-end Android devices. In the meantime, the Snapdragon 835 made it to the market already, and is currently powering the Samsung Galaxy S8 and a few other phones currently going on sale across the world.
The Lumia 960 was discontinued before even launching, so the picture we see here, if it’s not a fake of course, shows just a prototype, with Microsoft most likely planning a series of other updates as well.
Rumor has it that Microsoft is already working on an overhaul of its mobile platform, and a new device seems to be part of this plan, which means that even though the Lumia 960 got canceled, another flagship phone is already in the works.
Keep in mind that we can’t confirm if this photo is real or not, but either way, there’s no doubt that at the time of Lumia 950’s launch, Microsoft was a lot more committed to its mobile platform than it is these days. So prototypes like these are clearly possible.