Nokia has unveiled a new high-end smartphone, the Lumia 928, which it will sell exclusively through the second-largest US carrier, Verizon, aiming to expand its share in the premium market after years in which it has fallen behind rivals Samsung and Apple.

The new Lumia 928, priced at $99 if customers mail in a $50 rebate and sign to a two-year deal with Verizon, is similar to the Lumia 920 model currently sold through AT&T, but is lighter and slightly different in appearance.

It weighs 162g compared with 185g for the 920, which some critics had said was too heavy. The 4.5in screen also extends to the edge of the phone, giving a sharper impression than the curved edges of the 920. The new models also come in black and white, compared with the colourful options including blue, red and yellow, of the earlier Lumia range.

Most other features, such as a 8.7MP camera and 1.5GHz dual core processor by Qualcomm, are the same as the 920.

The 928 is the latest in Nokia's Lumia range of smartphones which use Microsoft's Windows Phone 8 software.

Nokia switched to Windows Phone in 2011, aiming to compete with Apple's iPhones and rivals using Google's Android system. Though worldwide sales of Lumia phones have grown in recent quarters, at 5.6m in first quarter they still account for only around 5% of the overall smartphone market, which now makes up more than half of all mobile phone sales.

Earlier this week chief executive Stephen Elop launched a series of new products running Nokia's "Asha" software, which gives it some smartphone-like capability, priced in the lower and mid-tier range to protect its position in emerging markets such as India and China. However Nokia itself doesn't class Asha phones as smartphones, and the new models don't have 3G data capability.