Lumia 900 set for March release: report

The Lumia 900, Nokia's new Windows Phone, could hit shelves in the US as soon as March, according to one reporter. 

Earlier this month, Nokia took the wraps off the Lumia 900, a smartphone equipped with a 4.3-inch high-resolution display, 512MB of RAM, an 8-megapixel camera, and the Windows Phone Mango operating system. The new Windows Phone OS has been a hit among reviewers, but the phones that it runs on have so far been rather lukewarm. Nokia hopes to change that with this Lumia line, which has performed consistently well in Europe. 

And according to tech reporter Paul Thurrott, the Lumia 900 could be arriving as soon as March – earlier than many tech insiders had suspected. Thurrott, who runs the SuperSite for Windows blog, made the comments during a video interview from the floor of CES, the annual electronics show in Las Vegas.

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The timing would be propitious for Nokia, which could get out in front of the crushing press blitz sure to surround the next iPhone, while sustaining the already high level of Lumia buzz. The Lumia 900, after all, has been called "one of the hottest phones" at CES – a svelte, a high-powered piece of eye-candy. 

"The Lumia 900 beautifully showcases the Windows Phone OS," Ginny Mies of PC World wrote in a hands-on test of the Lumia this week. "The body is made from a single injectable polyurethane matte plastic build, as is the Lumia 800, which gives it a sturdy feel. The material is soft to touch, but resistant to scratches (although not necessarily fingerprints). And it doesn't feel like it will completely shatter if you drop it."

Not that everyone is totally blown away. Writing at Ars Technica, Casey Johnston lamented the undersized battery life on the Lumia 900. 

"In our eyes, the biggest red flag, relatively speaking, on the Lumia 900's spec sheet is the battery life: Nokia estimates the phone's 1830mAh battery (a generous size for a smartphone) will get up to 7 hours of 3G talk time and 6.5 hours of video," Johnston notes. "While the phone is undoubtedly faster than other Windows Phone devices we've tried, this suggests that it's operating at too high a level for a decent battery life." 

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