Nokia’s AT&T-bound Ace is the Lumia 900, a potentially killer Windows Phone

Above: A mockup comparing the Lumia 900 to the Lumia 800

We heard last week that Nokia was preparing an LTE-powered Windows Phone for AT&T, dubbed the Ace, and it now appears to be much more than just a 4G version of the Lumia 800.

The Ace is actually AT&T’s name for the Lumia 900, an unannounced Nokia Windows Phone with other notable upgrades over the Lumia 800, reports PocketNow. We expect Nokia to announce the device next week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which should give AT&T a nifty exclusive device for its fledgling LTE network.

This report is also more than a mere rumor, since it pretty much confirms details first reported by the mobile site Boy Genius Report last month.

While it may seem confusing for Nokia to launch yet another high-end Windows Phone only a few months after it debuted the Lumia 800 (and its inexpensive sibling the Lumia 710), I don’t think anyone will complain about the Lumia 900’s specs, as it seems to fix all of the issues I had with the Lumia 800.

In addition to LTE 4G capabilities, the Lumia 900 will also sport a larger 4.3-inch display (the 800 has a 3.7-inch screen), and a front-facing camera, according to leaked images. Under the hood, it’ll run the same 1.4-giaghertz processor as the 800.

While I thought the Lumia 800 was going to be a very important phone for Microsoft this year, you can pretty much transplant everything I said about that phone onto the Lumia 900. Its better specs will make it more competitive against the iPhone 4S and Android superphones. Now it makes sense why Nokia has been so coy about announcing the Lumia 800 for the US market: It’ll likely never get here, but it looks like we’ll have something much better to look forward to.