The Nokia Lumia 720 was announced alongside the entry-level Nokia Lumia 520 at the MWC show in Barcelona and sports a similar design to the brand's existing Windows Phone 8 handsets, such as the Nokia Lumia 820. It's set to go head to head with the likes of the HTC 8S. We went in for a closer look...

Nokia Lumia 720: Size and build

The new handset sports a sleek, slim, design unlike the slightly chunky profile of the flagship Nokia Lumia 920, with dimensions of 127.9 x 67.5 x 9mm. It's also pretty lightweight, tipping the scales at 128g although we did find that it hand the tendency to slide out of our hand when we were trying to photograph it.

The new handset will be available in five colours - black, white, red, blue and yellow.

Nokia Lumia 720: Features

While the spec line-up is relatively standard, the phone's camera sports a large f/1.9 aperture plus Carl Zeiss optics along with a 6.7MP sensor, with the brand having designed it to perform well in low lighting conditions.

You'll also get HD video on the front-facing camera for video calling. What's more, you also have the option of wireless charging if you shell our for the decicated accessory cover.

Nokia Lumia 720: Screen

The Lumia 720 sports a relatively standard 4.3-inch screen - steering clear of the current vogue for large screens, like those on the HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S3. IPS technology means that the screen has a decent viewing angle, looking relatively bright and colourful even when viewing from a relatively tight angle.

The 800x480 isn't exactly a showstopper, offering up a rather pedestrian 217ppi on the 15:9 screen, but it's not bad for for a mid-range phone.

Nokia Lumia 720: Performance

The phone runs on the dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 chipset, clocking in at 1GHz. We only had a brief play with the handset (mainly because it was tethered to Nokia employee on a stretchy piece of string), but we found that the UI was zippy enough, without any sign of lag.

Nokia Lumia 720: Verdict

The Nokia Lumia 720 looks like a great option if you're after a Windows Phone 8 handset that won't cost you the Earth. We'll let you know more as soon as we can get one in for a full review....

Nokia Lumia 720 release date: TBC

Nokia Lumia 720 price: TBC