Nokia Lumia 900 to launch in Australia

Nokia has confirmed its flagship Lumia 900 smartphone will launch in Australia with the company offering media a sneak peek of the handset next Thursday.

It is the phone maker’s first confirmation of Australian availability since the smartphone first surfaced globally in late February.

The Lumia 900 is the higher-end sister of the Lumia 800, which launched in Australia in March, and the Lumia 610, which is also expected to be previewed next Thursday.

Nokia has positioned the Lumia 610 as its most affordable in the range. The $US250 ($A235) device runs the most recent version of Windows Phone 7.5 ‘Mango’, built specifically by Microsoft to run on lower-cost hardware.

The Lumia 610 has a 3.7-inch 800x480 LCD screen, 256MB of RAM, and touts an MSM7x27 Qualcomm processor.

The higher-tier 900 boasts a larger screen than its Lumia 800 3.7in predecessor, at 4.3in, and runs on Windows Phone 7.5 with a 1.4 GHz processor, including 512 MB of RAM and 16GB internal memory. It echoes the 800’s 8 megapixel camera but adds on a front-facing 1.3 megapixel camera.

Nokia has high hopes for the Lumia range, and the 900 specifically, after a difficult year which saw it suffer a net loss of €1.6 billion ($A2 billion) for the first quarter of the 2012 financial year.