Since the launch of its first two Windows Phones in October 2011, Nokia has expanded its smartphone offering into an astonishing range of devices, from the brilliant and ultra-affordable Lumia 520, all the way up to the giant Lumia 1520 phablet.
We’ve counted no less than twenty distinct Lumia handsets so far: the 505, 510, 520, 521, 610, 620, 625, 710, 720, 800, 810, 820, 822, 900, 920, 925, 928, 1020, 1320 and 1520 have all gone on sale or been announced by the company, with more still rumoured to appear. There have also been localised versions of some of these devices created for the Chinese market, with few or no external design changes.
With such an impressive list of phones developed in just two years, it almost defies belief that there could have been even more Lumia devices released. But perennial leaker @evleaks has revealed official renders of one such handset that didn’t make the cut: the Lumia 719C.
The existence of the 719C first came to light in early 2012; the first visible proof of the device emerged in March of that year with the appearance of a leaked image.
The ‘C’ in the handset’s designation indicates that it would have been destined for the Chinese market (specifically, for China Telecom"s CDMA2000 network), and as the 71x numbering suggests, it was apparently conceived as a spin-off from the Lumia 710. But unlike other Lumia variants for China, such as the 610C and 920T – which were more or less identical in appearance to their non-Chinese siblings – the 719C had its own design, distinctive in several ways from the 710.
Unlike the 710, the 719C had a small lip of colour visible from the front, right at the very bottom, which extended from the colourful rear shell. The colours shown in the renders are also much glossier and shinier than those used on the 710, which had rubberised matte plastic rear covers. The final aesthetic difference is the 719C’s slightly wider row of physical buttons on the front.
We’ll probably never know precisely why the Lumia 719C never made it to market, but it’s always fun to see a little hint of what might have been.
Source: @evleaks