No Surprise, Nokia Says Lumia 900 Headed to Europe Next Quarter

Sometimes tradeshows bring surprises, sometimes announcements are made that almost anyone could predict. In that latter category: the Lumia 900 that Nokia said at CES last month was headed for the U.S. carrier AT&T... to no one's surpise the company said today at MWC 2012 this high-end Windows Phone is also going to be released in Europe.

The European variant will be prices at EUR 480. Nokia stopped short of specifics on release dates, aside from saying that the smartphone is expected to begin shipping in the second quarter of 2012. 

The American version will be able to run on AT&T's 4G LTE network, but there are plenty of countries around the world that haven't yet implementsed LTE. A version that support 4G HSPA+ at up to 42 Mbits will be released.

Before today's announcement, there were rumors that Europe might get an upgraded version called the Lumia 910 with a 12 megapixel camera. As it turns out, this didn't happen. Instaead, Nokia made it clear that the European version will have an 8 megapixel camera, just liike AT&T's. Still, this will have Carl Zeiss optics, a large aperture for improved performance in low-light conditions, and wide angle focal length for capturing 16:9 images. It will also be the first Lumia phone to feature a front-facing camera.

One Big Happy Family
Just like the U.S. version, the European Lumia 900 will run Microsoft's Windows Phone 7.5 on a 1.4 GHz single-core processor. There will be 16 GB of internal memory and 512 MB of RAM.

It will have a 4.3-inch ClearBlack, AMOLED, 800 x 480 (WVGA) Touchscreen with Corning Gorilla Glass to protect it from breakage and scratches.

In addition to HSPA+, the Lumia 900 is going to have WiFi b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1 +EDR. An 1830 mAh battery should give it 7 hours of talk time.

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