Nokia Lumia 900

AT&T will begin selling the Lumia 900 April 8, though it’s now available for preorder, for $99—at least half what comparable phones go for but a price that analysts say is just right for what Nokia needs to accomplish.

Made to pop in a lineup of black Android phones, the Lumia 900 will be available in cyan (bright blue) and black and, after April 22, a high-gloss white. The display is what Nokia calls a 4.3-inch “ClearBlack” active-matrix organic LED (AMOLED) that’s said to offer easy viewing, inside or out.

The thinnest Lumia to date, the 900 measures 5 by 2.7 by 0.45 inches, and weighs 5.6 ounces. For comparison’s sake, the iPhone 4S measures 4.5 by 2.31 by 0.37 inches, and weighs 4.9 ounces.

A U-verse Mobile app gives U-verse subscribers access to loads of television shows and lets them manage their DVR recordings. There’s also Nokia Drive, a free turn-by-turn navigation app and, preloaded, an ESPN sports hub and CNN for Windows Phone app.

All the expected stuff, and more, is here. There’s Internet Explorer 9 with HTML 5 support, email, calendar, contacts, WiFi Hotspot capabilities for up to five devices, support for different music and video formats, and Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are deeply integrated—a perk of Windows Phone 7.5, known as Mango—so you can see all the details on each user in one spot, instead checking the various apps. Updating tiles on the face of the device makes it easy to see updates.

On the back, there’s an 8-megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss lens, an F2.2 aperture and a wide angle focal length, for good photos in low-light conditions. The 1-megapixel front-facing camera also has a wide-angle lens for good-quality video calling and 30-frames-per-second video capture.

In addition to 4G Long-Term Evolution (LTE) and High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA) connectivity, there’s assisted GPS, WiFi, USB 2.0 and Bluetooth 2.1. AT&T now has 31 LTE markets, with eight more planned to go live in the coming weeks. By the end of 2012, it plans to double the roughly 74 million people it covered at the start of the year.