Nokia silently launches Lumia 900 in India for Rs 32,999

Following its much-talked-about unveiling of the Lumia 820 and Lumia 920 smartphones, Nokia has quietly launched the Lumia 900 in India. We were expecting the smartphone to make it here a lot sooner, around the time Nokia fooled everybody by launching the limited edition Dark Knight Rises special edition Lumia 800 in India after teasing the Lumia 900 special edition -- but it’s finally here. Nokia’s online store lists it up for grabs at Rs 32,999.

It is interesting to note that Nokia has barely announced the Lumia 900’s launch in India. The company has always treated India as one of its key markets, and has so far launched its mobile phones with much fanfare in the country.

The Rs 32,999 price tag seems a bit heavy for a Windows Phone 7 device, especially one that’s never going to get Windows Phone 8. We also think the Lumia 900 is a bit out of date, especially with the Lumia 820 and Lumia 920 being unveiled.

The Lumia 900 runs on Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango), features a 4.3-inch AMOLED screen with ClearBlack technology, has a polycarbonate body, and is powered by a 1.4GHz single-core Qualcomm processor. It has a 1830mAh battery that offers a maximum of 300 hours of stand-by time, and seven hours of talk time. It has an 8 megapixel camera with dual LED flash with an aperture of f/2.2. The camera can capture 720p HD videos at 30 frames per second. The Lumia 900 will be updated to Windows Phone 7.8 when the operating system is launched.

Nokia launches the Lumia 900 in India. Finally!

Here is a quick look at the highlighted features of the Nokia Lumia 900:

• 4.3-inch AMOLED touchscreen with ClearBlack technology
• GPRS, HSPA, EDGE,HSUPA, GSM, HSDPA, LTE, WDCMA, Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11 b/g/n, DLNA
• GPS and A-GPS support
• Bluetooth v2.1 with EDR
• 8 megapixel camera with dual LED flash, VGA front facing camera
• 512MB RAM, 16GB internal memory
• microUSB 2.0 port

Nokia Lumia 900 users came in for a major shock earlier this year when Microsoft announced that Windows Phone 8 would not support the crop of devices available at the time. However, Nokia seems determined to make sure its WP7 smartphone range is not ignored. Following the big launch of the new phones, the Finnish manufacturer stated that existing Lumia owners have plenty to look forward to and are “definitely not being left behind". The post goes on to say that the Lumia 610, Lumia 710, Lumia 800 and Lumia 900 will receive a new, updated user interface, new features, apps and upgrades.

The upgrades scheduled for the smartphones include the long-awaited ability to send or receive files over Bluetooth. Users will also get a new Start screen with a look familiar to that of Windows Phone 8, a ringtone app maker and a contact sharing app that lets you share your contacts via Bluetooth, in addition to SMS and email.

The new apps for the Lumias that have been launched include Nokia City Lens, which is Nokia’s location-based augmented reality application. Using the phone’s camera viewfinder, Nokia City Lens provides an augmented reality overlay view of buildings and instantly highlights places of interest. Also announced is Nokia Counters, which helps you keep an eye on your phone usage.

Nokia will also bring Cinemagraph and updates to Smart Group Shot to existing Lumia devices with some additional surprises to make photo shooting and sharing as easy as possible.