Nokia Lumia 900 brief hands-on

While photographing the white Lumia 800 at the Nokia House this week, for a brief moment, I was shown an early prototype Nokia Lumia 900. The previously announced Lumia 900 is due to hit American telco AT&T next month, with an international version rumoured to be announced later at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

I was asked not to take pictures of the prototype, but the overall hardware design is similar to the one shown at CES 2012 and there are already plenty of press pictures out in the wild, including the leaked white Lumia 900. Curiously, the prototype I was shown did not have an AT&T logo, but there was nothing else to make me believe this was an international Lumia 900/910.

The Lumia 900 features the same design language as the Lumia 800 and Nokia N9. While it looks like flatten Lumia 800 and thus features a larger footprint than its smaller cousin, it still feel light and comfortable to hold. The edge of 4.3" AMOLED CBD display's bezel is also raised, interrupting the smooth curved design somewhat. I was told that it will be gone on the production version. The device I was shown was black, with similar matte finish to that of my black Lumia 800. And yes, the display's glass is flat.

Beneath the unibody polycarbonate body lies components not dissimilar to the Lumia 800, including a Qualcomm Snapdragon SoC with 1.4GHz Scorpion processor and Adreno 205 GPU, 8MP wide angle camera with dual LED flash and a bright Carl Zeiss branded f2.2 lens, 512MB RAM and 16GB storage, plus some upgrades including a larger battery as well as a front facing camera for video calls. The AT&T Lumia 900 also contains a LTE radio, a technology that much of Europe's telco has been dragging their feet to deploy. It will run on Windows Phone 7.5 Mango.

I actually prefer the overall design as well as the feel of the Lumia 800 in my hands, to the prototype Lumia 900 myself but this is just a personal preference. The Lumia 900 does look like a great alternative for people waiting for a Windows Phone Lumia with a larger display and/or front facing camera, so Nokia would be wise to announce its availability in Europe soon.