Nokia Lumia 820

The Lumia 920 and Lumia 820 Windows Phones are slated for a mid-January launch, confirmed by a live chat session with a Nokia Care representative. January 11th was the date provided in the chat window, which solidifies the information handed out previously. It was said Lumia Windows Phone hardware would be heading to the market early 2012.

As Chinese stores are beginning to get the new generation of Lumia devices in tiny, tiny trickles, consumers who are lucky enough to secure a phone or two in the extremely limited supply have found a pleasant surprise: the phones are coming with a much called for feature, which is call & SMS blocker.

The stealing and selling of private information has always been a big problem in China. It's developed into a full fledged industry. Occasionally even employees of ISPs, mobile carriers and banks are caught selling their customer information in bulks. What follows immediately is spamming, quite precisely targeted, coming through all sorts of channels in bulks.

Hot damn. Nokia has updated a handful of their Windows Phone 8 apps for the Lumia 820 and 920. Most of you are going to bed excited for ‘Portico’ to hit tomorrow, but now get even more. Nokia has updates in the Marketplace for Nokia Maps, Cinemagraph, Nokia Music and some audio settings. Read on to see what has changed.

For those of you fawning over our sneak peek of the Lumia 920 OS and firmware update, you can go to bed happy tonight because tomorrow is your day. AT&T is now notifying employees internally that the combo OS and firmware update will be going live tomorrow, December 19th for both the Lumia 920 and 820 (no word on the HTC 8X, sorry). 

No time was given but our bet is 9AM PT/12PM ET is when the update will begin to be available...

Just as the Nokia Cardboard Challenge comes to a complete closure the company has kicked off another competition for consumers to participate in. Also celebrating the festive period, the Nokia Paper Challenge is a perfect opportunity to use up the leftover wrapping paper (or newspaper, magazine, flyer, pamphlet, etc. if you don't celebrate with presents in December) to create Nokia products and win prizes.

The Lumia 920 and Lumia 820 are both launching in multiple markets and word has got round from Nokia that the company's latest Windows Phone 8 hardware will be released in India by early 2013. According to multiple reports from consumers who have contacted Nokia's support channel, the company is planning to launch the Lumia 920 and 820 in the first week of January 2013, while the Lumia 620 will be hitting stores in the last week of the month.

China is now officially the single biggest market for Windows Phone and Nokia are keen to pull out all the stops to get their latest Windows Phones 8 to market. As of yesterday morning Nokia has made their Lumia range available to the Chinese market by way of video announcement.

The devices are said to be available now in many of the main online retailers in China such as SuNing, JingDong, YiXun but the 620 is not showing just yet.

Nokia has announced on its Malaysian Facebook account that the Lumia 920 and Lumia 820 will be available for pre-order in the country from its main stores for RM1,999 (approx. $655) and RM1,599 (approx. $525) respectively. From tomorrow onwards, consumers will be able to contact / visit Nokia stores throughout the country and order their Lumia Windows Phone 8 handset.

If you couldn't get tickets to the Nokia Deadmau5 Event or simply won't be in the London area today, you can catch all the excitement online. The event is to celebrate the successful launch of Nokia's latest Windows Phones, the Lumia 920 and 820.

The Deadmau5 event starts at 8PM GMT and you can catch it here. Our London Staff (Jay, Rich and Rob) should be in attendance and will report back later on all the goodness that was on hand.

Thanks, korggy, for the tip!