It's finally here! After online leaks aplenty, Microsoft and Nokia unveiled the Nokia Lumia 920 and Nokia Lumia 820 at simultaneous events in New York and Finland.

At this second crossroads of failure and success -- the first was the first generation of the Lumia line -- Nokia needs a hit. Nokia can survive off its Asha phones, on middling Lumia sales, and on its maps business, but in order to thrive, it needs to sell, sell, sell.

Nokia is calling its next-generation Lumia "the most innovative smartphone in the world," Jo Harlow, Nokia's executive vice president in charge of smart devices, said during the kickoff event. Is she right? The Lumia 920 certainly pushes ahead of the original Lumia 900, and brings some serious advancements to the components.

Design and screen
As I predicted, the Nokia Lumia 920 has an almost identical physical design as the Lumia 900 before it. This time, the handset comes in Sunshine Yellow, but Nokia will also issue it in Lipstick Red, and Slate Grey.

While most of the polycarbonate body remains unchanged, Nokia has improved the screen. The Lumia 920 gets a 4.5-inch Nokia PureMotion HD Plus display, which features a WXGA resolution (1,280x768 pixels), a slightly higher resolution than the standard HD (1,280x720 pixels). It has a fast refresh rate that removes flickers. Nokia also claims it's brighter than rival phones, but we'll have to see about that.

The part of the screen that excites me most is the screen's new ClearBlack display filter, which uses polarization to cut down on glare. Nokia says its new, improved ClearBlack is good enough to read in the desert or on the beach. We'll certainly have fun testing out this claim.