One of the hottest devices to be announced at CES 2012 was Nokia’s Lumia 900. Nokia and Microsoft already gave us the lowdown on the big brother of the Lumia 800, but one detail that they left out was a release date. All we had to go on was “the next few months.” Now it appears that we can narrow down that timeframe: the Lumia 900 will be launching on AT&T in March.
The info was spilled via the Nokia Developer portal. In an otherwise typical press release announcing the Lumia 900, it is revealed that the Lumia 900 “will become available exclusively through AT&T in March.”
The Lumia 900 is, by most people’s measures, a gorgeous phone. Its polycarbonate build is complemented by a 4.3-inch display that uses ClearBlack technology for darker darks. Its software is the real deal too, sporting the latest edition of Windows Phone, version 7.5 Mango. The Lumia 900 will run on AT&T’s burgeoning LTE network.
Microsoft and Nokia wanted to wait until after the 2011 holiday season to launch the first fruits of its collaboration. This was allegedly because it wanted to have its own moment in the spotlight. This may prove to be a smart strategy: apart from maybe Intel’s Medfield announcement, the Lumia 900′s unveilingmay have been the biggest smartphone news to come out of CES 2012. March shouldn’t be a crowded field for big smartphone releases, though the expected release of the iPad 3 will surely dominate tech headlines in that month.
There still isn’t any pricing info for the Lumia 900, but it would be wise for Nokia and AT&T to keep it at $200. Verizon’s annoying habit of pricing its new LTE phones at $300 may work for the Android fans who always want the latest-and-greatest. But it wouldn’t be a wise pricing strategy for a platform that’s still unfamiliar to most Americans. $200 would match it up evenly with the iPhone, which is a comparison that Microsoft and Nokia will gladly accept.
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