Nokia has announced their latest high end flagship phone at CES 2012- the Lumia 900. Continuing the beautiful minimalist design of the Lumia 800, the Lumia 900 is a new super sized version with some much improved internals. Still sporting a polycarbonate design, it is apparently a lot more resilient than most new smartphones.
The camera is also taking center stage on this model – it features a 8MP sensor behind a Carl Zeiss wide angle lens with a nice f2.2 aperture at 28mm, and a 1 MP front camera. No mention is made if it is a backlit sensor like the iPhone 4S, but at least at that aperture you should expect some better low light camera performance. The camera can also capture 720p video at 30fps. On the inside there is a 1.4GHz Snapdragon processor (single core though) and 512MB RAM with 16GB of storage. The phone will run Windows Phone Mango 7.5, and also ships with an LTE capable radio (at least in the US). The screen size has been increased to 4.3 inches, but still only packs 800 by 480 pixels. Not that it is anything to sneeze at. That big screen might make you worry about battery power, but its broader design means the Lumia 900 can handle a 1840mAH battery which is good for 7 hours talk time or a claimed 300hrs standby.
As part of Nokia’s adoption of Windows Phone 7, they have enhanced a few things in the software stack – Nokia Drive is a fully featured GPS navigation system which is free with the phone. And no, it is not just a subscription. Social networking is also catered for with Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter integration into the contacts.
Nokia has in recent years fallen behind other smartphone manufacturers in terms of operating system innovation and phone design – but the latest Lumia 800 and 900 really makes us think that Nokia still has some life in it yet. Right now the Lumia 900 is US only, but we will keep you posted when it ships internationally.