While Microsoft has continued to flesh out Windows Phone's low-end offerings, there's an awkward gap at the high end.

The Lumia Icon/930 and Lumia 1520 are both fine phones, but there are problems. In the US, the Icon was exclusive to Verizon, and the carrier has stopped selling it. The 1520 similarly has exclusivity issues, this time on AT&T. Further, both phones are perhaps half a generation behind. Their Snapdragon 800 processors still provide competitive performance, but Snapdragon 801 and 805 processors offer higher clock speeds and more GPU power.

This gap wasn't supposed to exist. A high-end phone was in development, codenamed McLaren. Like the Lumia 1020, it had a big camera. Like the 1520, it had a big screen. It was cancelled, and the device seems to have disappeared without a trace. But now we know what it looked like thanks to a series of pictures that have come from China and were published on Chinese social media site Baidu.













The pictures show a few notable features of the phone. It uses on-screen software buttons on the front instead of the hardware buttons that have been found on all previous high-end Lumia devices. However, it retains the hardware camera button. It includes a microSD slot. And it's large: it's bigger than an iPhone 6.

The styling is also new. The phone keeps the well-known Lumia shape with rounded sides and a flat top and bottom. But instead of the polycarbonate that has been found on most of the Lumia range, this device has a metal (or at least, metal-looking) body. The back includes a large camera bump—not as big as the Lumia 1020's but still significant. The camera itself is believed to be a 20MP unit.

Why was the McLaren cancelled? The prevailing theory is that it was designed for a "3D touch" feature that at one time was to be included in Windows Phone 8.1. The idea was that the operating system would support some form of hover-based interface, wherein putting one's finger near a tile on the Start screen—but not actually tapping it—would make the tile expand into subtiles.

But this feature was cancelled or at least delayed—there are reports that it will be introduced in Windows Phone 10—and so the phone meant to showcase the ability was cancelled. Our understanding is that this isn't the full story, and there was some kind of hardware issue, too. A software feature alone wouldn't result in the cancellation of an otherwise working hardware device.

Whatever the reasons, the result is the same: there's still no real flagship. Anyone in need of an upgrade who bought the Lumia 920, 925, 928, or even 1020 has no Lumia-brand option to go for. It's a gaping void in the Windows Phone ecosystem. It hurts, and there's no end in sight.