Nokia officially announced that its Lumia 1520 Windows Phone phablet will hit the UK on Dec. 6, launching on various carriers and retailers.

The Nokia Lumia 1520 is the company's first foray into the phablet market and it's also the first phablet to run Microsoft's Windows Phone 8. It packs a large 6-inch display and a powerful quad-core processor, among other high-end specs and features.

The handset has already launched in the U.S. and will make its UK debut soon as well. Interested buyers will be able to purchase the device starting on Dec. 6, either ordering it from O2 retail stores or from Vodafone's online store. The super-sized smartphone will also be available for purchase from third-party retailers such as Carphone Warehouse and Phones4U.

Carphone Warehouse will be offering the SIM-free, off-contract version of the Nokia Lumia 1520 for £599.99, while Vodafone lists the smartphone with an £80 price tag plus £38 per month with a two-year contract. With this plan, users would get unlimited talk and texts and 6GB of data. Choosing a steeper £47 per month plan, meanwhile, would make the handset free.

Nokia is currently listing only the black and white color options for the Nokia Lumia 1520 in the UK, with no mention of the other two colors. It remains unclear at this point whether it will add the red and yellow color options at a later time.

As a reminder, the new Nokia Lumia 1520 sports a 6-inch display with a full HD resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels, it packs the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 quad-core processor clocked at 2.2GHz and has 2GB of RAM to keep things running smoothly.

Other specs include a high-end 20-megapixel camera with Nokia's PureView technology and Carl Zeiss optics, 32GB of internal storage capacity expandable up to 64GB via microSD, and a 3,400 mAh battery. The Nokia Lumia 1520 runs Microsoft's latest mobile software, i.e. Windows Phone 8 Update 3.

In the U.S., the handset has seen some shipment delays due to overwhelming demand and it's currently available in limited quantities at AT&T and the Microsoft Store. It remains to be seen whether the UK launch will face similar supply shortages.