AT&T’s Year-Old Nokia Lumia 900 Finally Gets A Taste Of Windows Phone 7.8

AT&T customers who took the plunge on Nokia’s Lumia 900 have had to sit idly by and watch Windows Phone 8 supercede the software loaded on their own devices, but they’ll soon be able to experience at least part of what WP8 brings to the table. Nokia announced earlier today via Twitter that the Windows Phone 7.8 update is now available to owners of the one-time AT&T flagship.

Better late then never, as they say.

In case you haven’t been keeping track (after all, that’s what I’m here for), Nokia began the process of bringing Windows Phone 7.8 to the Lumia-owning masses back in February. All that’s really changing here is that the Lumia 900 will get a minor facelift — think (among other things) the inclusion of Windows Phone 8’s oft-updating Live Tiles, improved lock screen security, and the ability to share internet connections. Sadly, since the update is mostly cosmetic, Lumia 900 owners looking to fiddle with some of the new Windows Phone 8-optimized apps that Microsoft and its developer partners have been touting lately will have to wait until they splurge on some new hardware first.

If we’re being honest, those Lumia 900 owners have had their share of issues to deal with — not only were they stuck with a device that could never be updated to Windows Phone 8, early production runs yielded Lumia 900s that just couldn’t consistently latch onto a wireless data connection, prompting Nokia to push out a software fix and offer a credit for affected consumers.

I suspect that a decent chunk of 900 owners will just be glad that the update is finally out there, but their eyes may soon be drawn to an even newer batch of Windows-powered handsets shortly — Nokia is reportedly preparing to show off some new Lumias at a London event in less than a week.