AT&T has officially confirmed the release date of Nokia’s long-awaited Lumia 900 Windows Phone: it will land on April 8, costing just $100 with a contract.
[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":408046,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"business,mobile,","session":"A"}']Additionally, AT&T is launching several other enticing devices on the same day, including the HTC Titan II Windows Phone and the Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket HD. The carrier also said it would carry the Sony Xperia ion, though there’s no launch date yet.
That’s a lot of new hardware, but the real star of the day will be the Lumia 900. Announced back at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, the Lumia 900 is Nokia’s first stab at the high-end smartphone market in America, even though it’s priced as a mid-range entry. At $100, the Lumia 900 will make many consumers take a second look at Windows Phone, and it’ll likely chip away at sales from similarly priced Android phones.
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The announcement comes on the heels of a pretty big marketing flop for Microsoft, in which an Android user was cheated out of winning the company’s Smoked by Windows Phone platform. But I don’t think that fiasco will make much of a dent in Lumia 900 sales.
The Lumia 900 sports a 4.3-inch AMOLED Clear Black display — a big improvement over the Lumia 800′s 3.7-inch screen, LTE 4G speeds, 1.4 gigahertz CPU (though unfortunately not dual-core — those Windows Phones are expected later this year), and a front-facing camera for video conferencing. Notably, the Lumia 900 also features a huge battery (1830mah), which should help it survive a day’s worth of heavy usage.
You can start pre-ordering the Lumia 900, which will be available in black and cyan, on March 30. A white version of the phone is coming on April 22.
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