Middle-of-the-road Lumias are all well and good but we know that Microsoft is holding off on releasing its next flagship handsets until Windows 10 is out in the wild - and that could be any time from summer onwards.

When the brand new OS does make it to phones, the first two cutting edge devices in line could be the 'Cityman' and the 'Talkman', according to some insider rumours reported by Unleash The Phones. You may remember we heard the same codenames used internally at Microsoft last year.

Cityman, if the word on the street is accurate, will come with a 5.7-inch QHD (1440 x 2560) display, a 64-bit Qualcomm octa-core processor (either the Snapdragon 808 or Snapdragon 810) and 3GB of RAM. That's topped off with 32GB of storage, a microSD card slot, a 20-megapixel rear camera, a 5-megapixel front camera and a 3300 mAh removable battery.

Mobile wars 2.0

The more modest Talkman will have a smaller 5.2-inch display (with the same QHD resolution) and a slower hexa-core Qualcomm processor, though the rest of the specs will match up with the Cityman. In other words, these are two very capable phones.

Are these the flagship phones Executive Vice President Stephen Elop was talking about at MWC 2015? It seems plausible - and handsets that Windows fans can actually feel proud to show off have been a long time coming.

With new software, new hardware and new ways to port apps from iOS and Android, 2015 is set to be the year that Microsoft throws everything at mobile. If it can't get a foothold in the market this time around it probably never will.

Via Softpedia