NOKIA Lumia 900 Pro Reviews

Pricing is always a major deciding factor for many things, as it can sprinkle the needed value for the dollar for each smartphone. Even though it’s been around for quite some time now, the $49.99 on-contract price of the Nokia Lumia 900 is without question an easier sell than the $200 on-contract starting cost of the iPhone 5. Therefore, if you’re limited by a budget, the Lumia 900 will be able to get you by – for now, that is. However, if you truly desire the more premium and overall better performer, the iPhone 5 is the way to go, despite its higher price point. Considering that it just became available very recently, there’s naturally going to be a premium attached to owning the iPhone 5, but surely, it’s worth every single penny earned.

The Nokia Lumia 900 is a beautiful and powerful smartphone. It has excellent hardware, is tough and reliable. Windows Phone 7.5 didn’t disappoint us. Several features are obviously “inspired” by the iOS present on Apple’s iPhone, which is not a problem for the user. Usage is easy and intuitive, and installing (and uninstalling) applications and games is also quite easy. Compared to the Nokia Lumia 710, the Lumia 900 has a few improvements. The screen is bigger and brighter, the mass memory has 16 GB, the main camera has higher resolution, there is a frontal camera, and 4G support. If you will not really need those features, the simpler model has a better cost/benefit ratio. The biggest problem with the Lumia 900 is about timing. Right now, Microsoft is just about to release Windows Phone 8, and the existing Windows Phone 7.5 smartphones will not be able to upgrade the operating system to this version. However, Microsoft will release a 7.8 version, which will include some of the Windows Phone 8 features on the existing Windows Phone 7 smartphones.

The Nokia Lumia 900 had the time of its life in America and lands in Europe in a period of transition. It will be the Nokia flagship until the next generation of Microsoft-powered smartphones come with a bang. In a way, it's like being in charge of an interim government. Still gets you a place in history. But the Nokia Lumia 900 is a phone that deserves better than being remembered for leading the coalition of the forgotten.

One of the first dilemmas that everyone needs to overcome when looking at these two, it has to be which platform experience is going to be the more suitable one. For us, the TouchWiz Nature UX is light years more expansive with its arsenal of features to put the Windows Phone 7.5 Mango experience of the Nokia Lumia 900 to shame. No doubt, if money is a concern to you, the Lumia 900 is still a great option with its chic design and balanced set of features. However, if you want to experience something utterly cutting-edge, you’ll need to fork over the cash to scoop up the Samsung Galaxy S III – but trust us, you won’t regret it at all!

This is a handsome phone with an improved design matched by a strong battery life, decent camera and fast-enough processor. The Windows Phone system with its eye-catching dynamic tiles looks tremendous. And there are Nokia specialities like driving and public transport apps to enjoy. Even so, Windows Phone still doesn’t have the app range of iOS or Android. But what is available is turning out to be pretty good quality these days.

Nokia's superb build quality and a bigger screen, but there's not enough extra to justify buying this over the cheaper Lumia 800

We feel that the Lumia 900 is one of the most distinctive and well-designed smartphones to arrive on the market since the iPhone 4S. Microsoft appears to be falling behind Apple in Google in the race to improve and refine their respective mobile platforms, however Nokia's flagship is arguably the best example of Windows Phone's potential. Through their tight partnership, both Nokia and Microsoft seem to understand that the Lumia 900 must compete among entry-level handsets rather than going up against devices such as the iPhone 4S and Galaxy Nexus. Its $99 price tag is an enticing offer for a full-featured smartphone that compares well spec-for-spec against midrange Android handsets, and undercuts the refurbished iPhone 4S by $50. While the Lumia 900 is a great buy for anyone moving from a feature phone, midrange Android device, aging iPhone or another Windows Phone, Nokia and Microsoft still face challenges in their efforts to gain momentum against the market leaders. If Microsoft can commit to hastily refining its mobile platform, and bring such improvements to the Lumia 900 instead succumbing to the same form of fragmentation that plagues Android, the alliance may finally bring a new player into the two-horse race.

The Nokia Lumia 900 is a beautiful 4G LTE Windows Phone. It has a great design, great ergonomics and thanks to its polycarbonate build, it is remarkably solid. If you have not used the Windows Phone operating system, I would encourage you to check it out, and try it in a store if you can. It is very fast and clear but it’s really up to you to decide if you like the design and the ergonomics. Windows Phone works well for what I do (see “context”), and I’m just about sure that it has a lot of potential for many, but particularly for first-time smartphone owners. Now, it is clear that Windows Phone is still facing an uphill battle, and the main thing that you need to look at is whether or not it has the apps that you need. That is the single most important thing that you need to figure out. If your needs are simple (email, text, web, music, videos), this should be easy.

So, should you get the Nokia Lumia 900? We are torn between this and the Lumia 800 enjoying both phones as much as each other. The Lumia 900 delivers a bigger screen, a front facing camera, faster surfing speeds, internet tethering, a much better battery, and a easier to charge device than the 800. However all those extras come at the cost of a much bigger device that won't be for everyone. Like the Samsung Galaxy S III, Sony Xperia S, and HTC One X, the Lumia 900 is a big phone and that is likely to put some off. If you fancy the idea of a bigger screen this is the better of the two. It's more brash that the Lumia 800, but the experience is good. The screen's resolution is stretched to its limit at this size, but that's not enough to push it over the edge as in the Titan series from HTC. We aren't going to witter on about the merits of Windows Phone 7 over and over again. You either like the OS or you don't. Nokia has done the best it can to make the most of Windows Phone 7, for us making this a viable alternative to Android and the iPhone. The app scene is still lacking though. It is getting better, but if that's your main want, WP7 still won't deliver as much as the other two main platforms. For us, the success with WP7 is with contacts, the interactive tiles, and how easy everything is to use. The apps will come in time. We like it, but we know many won't.

Windows Phone fans have waited with bated breath for the Lumia line's "true" stateside debut. Standing tall with a 4.3-inch display and being the first of Nokia's brood to boast LTE connectivity, the 900 is the company's call-to-arms, a mid-range contender crafted with a single-minded mission: shore up the gaps left by the lesser 800 and 710 and establish a brand presence. Those handsets, for all their good looks and performance strengths, were more mobile welterweights than anything else: they aimed too low and too wide to capture the public imagination. This Lumia, though, was supposed to change all of that, backed by a considerable marketing push and higher-end ingredients. While we wouldn't color this AT&T debut as a failure, we wouldn't call it a crowning achievement either. Apart from a stated preference and dedication to Microsoft's Windows Phone OS, savvy geeks on the cusp of the next best thing won't necessarily want what the 900 has to offer, especially in light of that other spotlight-stealing flagship, the One X. By no means are these phones on equal footing. It's just that Nokia may have shot itself in the foot, succumbing to the hazards of hyperbolic quicksand far ahead of launch day. Much ado about nothing? Not quite, the Lumia 900 has its strengths, coming mainly in the form of optics, but it's the overall package and performance that's simply too plain, too ordinary, too dependable to merit the haughty flagship halo it aspires to emanate.

If you're new to the smartphone world, and you rely heavily on Windows, Office, Hotmail or Exchange already, this is the best Windows Phone you'll find. But those already entrenched in other platforms will have a hard time finding good reason to leave. We love where Microsoft and Nokia are heading with this partnership, though; we only hope the Marketplace can beef up in order to convince more people to leave the smartphone ecosystem that they're currently comfortable with.

I've already said this, but it bears repeating. I really wanted to love this phone. From a design standpoint, the Lumia 900 was immediately enticing. I'd already been salivating over Nokia's N9 and Lumia 800, so knowing that a slightly larger (but more feature packed) version of that device was headed our way was fairly encouraging. But while the hardware — at least externally — delivers, the phone as a whole does not. I think Nokia made a lot of the right decisions, but it's almost impossible to move beyond some of Windows Phone's shortcomings this late in the game. Try as I might to envision the Lumia 900 as my daily driver, the math never added up. There's just too much missing, or too much that feels unfulfilling. I used to get upset that Android didn't have a cohesive design language, and iOS was lacking basic functionality like copy and paste or multitasking — but most of those complaints have been put to bed. Today I might complain about a lack of widgets or a skin I don't like, but I'm not griping about fundamental pieces of an OS. And I think that's what's so trying about Windows Phone.

The more I use Windows Phone, the more I like it. I think that it has a great potential future, so long as it can find an audience. That’s the most difficult task ahead for Microsoft, Nokia, and AT&T, one they are fighting head on with a massive marketing campaign and the very low price of $50 for the phone. For a high-end smartphone, that’s the best deal you can find. But as I mentioned earlier, WP7 is like Opera; it has everything you need, but it’s very limited in apps, aka, what people want. The WP7 development community is growing, but my impression is that as far as app development is concerned, WP7 is a lost cause. Microsoft should focus its attention towards Windows 8, which will be able to share apps across all computing devices, from desktops and laptops to tablets and smartphones. That way there will not only be the largest audience for apps available anywhere, it will already have the infrastructure in place to make app development successful and profitable.

There has been a lot of interest and anticipation for the Nokia Lumia 900. It's the first real flagship Nokia Windows Phone to come to the U.S.A. Of course the Lumia 710 was the first Nokia Windows Phone in the U.S. and it has been selling very well on T-Moble, but the Lumia 900 is really the one everyone has been waiting for. It's got everything: great build quality, large screen, high speed LTE, great battery life, beautiful design, a stable/smooth/fun/easy/capable operating system, great reception, and a fantastic price. I'm a little disappointed that our review version is the black model since the Cyan version just looks so incredibly eye-catching. I think it's going to be difficult to find a reason not to buy one of these if you're on AT&T and are up for a contract renewal.

As it enables dual-core SoCs, the Apollo update leads to our continued plea to Microsoft: please throw better hardware at the Windows Phone platform. No company ever won by being the slowest. Windows Phone may be an extremely efficient platform (it is), but there are only good things to come from combining software efficiency with bleeding edge hardware. Microsoft has learned tremendously from Apple in this regard, but in order for Windows Phone to be more than a third runner up it needs to push the envelope just as much as Apple has been. Microsoft will eventually adopt Krait, and 28nm LTE is equally inevitable, but it would just be nice to see those things sooner rather than later on Windows Phone. At some point for a platform to be a winner, it must actually be industry leading. I suspect all of this will come as a part of Microsoft's Windows 8 strategy. Waiting is never easy.

The Nokia Lumia 900 is the best overall device I've seen from Nokia in years. It doesn't hit every nail on the head, but it's a strong framework on which I hope to see Nokia build further. The 900 really gets the basics right: it has great hardware, an excellent display, solid signal/voice performance, and the battery even manages to impress for a 4G device. The only limitation I saw in the hardware was the camera, which simply isn't as good as it needs to be to compete with other flagship devices in the market. On the software side, Nokia didn't do much to spruce up Windows Phone, but it is a capable platform that takes a different approach from Android and iOS. It is speedy, efficient, just not as customizable as Android. In the world of Windows Phone, the Nokia Lumia 900 is as good as it gets for the moment.

The Nokia Lumia 900 is a great phone, to be sure. It’s got a fantastic-looking display, it has LTE connectivity (while still maintaining decent battery life), it’s affordable, and it’s some powerful hardware for a Windows Phone, despite the fact that it still only has a single-core processor. It may have some drawbacks that I’m not crazy about, including the fact that it’s huge, way too slippery, and has a mediocre camera, but it’s still not unreasonable to call the Lumia 900 the best Windows Phone out there. But even though Nokia has succeeded in its mission to create a flagship Windows Phone, that doesn’t mean that there’s a lot of hope for the platform. The Lumia 900 was expected to be a savior for Windows Phone, kind of a last major effort to really get it to catch on, and I don’t think that’s what’s going to happen. It may be a solid phone, but at its core, it still offers the same experience as all other phones running Windows Phone 7.5. By not offering a vastly different experience, the Lumia 900 ultimately does nothing to attract new users or convert those who are so staunchly against the Windows Phone OS and its Metro UI (seriously, a lot people seem to really hate Metro and I’m not sure why, I think it’s a very clean, simple UI). Don’t get me wrong, I love Windows Phone and I don’t fault Nokia; it shouldn’t need to alter the Windows Phone experience at all to help it gain popularity. But if people didn’t like it before, there’s little here to change their minds. Thusly, I congratulate Nokia on a job well done with the Lumia 900, but I don’t see it making Windows Phone a real competitor.

Nokia Lumia 900 is arguably the best Windows Phone handset out there. It is great looking and well put together. It even manages to add a couple of exclusive software touches to an otherwise generic experience with Microsoft's mobile OS. Internals are as cutting edge as they can be, given Microsoft's ideas about smartphone hardware these days - especially with the presence of LTE connectivity on board. The phone's OS is its biggest limitation. Windows Phone is definitely gorgeous and smooth as silk. When it comes to functionality however, it has a lot to catch up with Android and iOS. This has nothing to do with the sheer number of apps, which are available for Windows Phone. It is their quality, which is lagging. The ones, which are actually any good, are priced much higher than their Android and iOS counterparts.

You must have noticed by now that, despite quite a few similarities, the Nokia Lumia 900 and the HTC Titan II have developed some quite different characters. The Lumia 900 wins the design contest. It is far more likely to turn heads than the generic looking Titan II. Build quality is top notch too, and so is the ClearBlack AMOLED display. The latter is possibly the best way to enjoy the Windows Phone OS. Our only grievance here is the slightly cheap and flimsy feel of the Lumia's hardware buttons. The Nokia will also last longer on a single charge than the HTC. The HTC Titan II on the other hand, is lighter, while being just as solidly built. Its bigger screen is likely to find some followers, despite its lower pixel density. It is also better equipped in the software department out of the box. The camera comparison is a rather curious tie between the two devices. The Lumia 900 takes better still photos. The HTC Titan II on the other hand, captures much better 720p videos, where the constant autofocus is not that big of a nuisance like in the case of the Nokia. With the Nokia Lumia 900 enjoying massive coverage, and costing half as much as the HTC Titan II, it is easy to guess that it will outsell its rival by quite a margin. This doesn't mean however, that the Titan II is not a good Windows Phone handset - it easily stacks up to the Lumia, and even does better than it on more than one occasion.

Competitive specs, a beautiful user interface, and a classy design alone won't turn the world on to Windows Phone and the Nokia Lumia 900. The world needs to be educated about Windows Phone, but thankfully, Nokia, Microsoft, and AT&T are planning a big marketing push for this handset. The Lumia 900 has the chops to stand up to the Android army and AT&T’s other darling, the iPhone 4S, but consumers need to be convinced that Windows Phone can give them everything Android and iOS can--and more. Although the Windows Marketplace is gaining apps every day (the current count is a respectable 70,000 apps), a few essentials remain missing from the catalog (Pandora, anyone?). Also, if you use a lot of Google services, Windows Phone won’t make you very happy. For example, you can’t upload videos directly from your photo gallery to YouTube, and the YouTube “app” is simply a redirect to the mobile YouTube site optimized for Windows Phone--where you still can't upload videos. Google Docs and Google Maps support? Forget it. Microsoft wants you to use its own services, such as Bing Maps, Office, and SkyDrive.

There's a lot on the line for Nokia and Microsoft with the Lumia 900. While one handset isn't going to sink either company, the right one could certainly do wonders for both companies' market (and mind) share in the U.S., where iOS and Android were not only born but have continued to thrive into a thoroughbred race with only two horses. Now that Palm's webOS has been pronounced DOA and Research in Motion's Blackberry continues on life support, Microsoft's Windows Phone looks like the knight in shining armor, promising to rescue users from Apple or Android domination. If Microsoft and Nokia can tighten up the OS, beef up Marketplace selection and slap in a better camera, they'll have a real shot at dethroning one or both smartphone giants. Until then, the Lumia 900 may not be perfect, but it's plenty good enough to recommend with little hesitation for users looking ahead to The Next Big Thing.

As we reach the end of our comparison, the last piece to the puzzle that stands in the way of proclaiming a winner is pricing. Admittedly, it’s hard not to like the $99.99 on-contract price attached to the Nokia Lumia 900. In fact, it’s the main reason why it stands out so much, as it consciously coughs up that perfect balance of quality performance and impeccable design. Sure, you can pay the extra money to get the HTC Titan II for $199.99 on-contract, which is still a great smartphone in many ways, but the thing you’ll be gaining is a handset that’s better equipped for shooting photos. If you can somehow live with the results produced by the Nokia Lumia 900’s camera, we’d recommend it any day of the week – plus, you’ll be saving a cool $100 at the same time!

The Nokia Lumia 900 for AT&T is a powerful, easy-to-use Windows Phone. It's great, as long as you don't need Words With Friends or some other apps you might find on an iPhone or an Android phone.

With a stunning display, fast data speeds, and a versatile camera, the Lumia 900 has what it takes to compete with the iPhone and with Android handsets

Making a decision is surely tough, especially when these two are extremely well rounded and abundant with drool worthy features to satisfy even the most hardened smartphone users out there. Having experienced the very best from both camps, we can firmly say that they live up to our expectations as being memorable devices, but ultimately, it’s going to come down to each person’s individual needs. Time after time, the iPhone 4S has impressed us in more ways than none, and as the competition continues to ramp up, it’s able to show why it’s still going to be a relevant device. Even to this day, it’s able to impress many thanks to its detailed Retina Display, while also being the go-to device for those who are looking for a point and shoot replacement. Conversely, the Nokia Lumia 900 is a valiant offering that stands above most other Windows Phones on the market – primarily for the fact that it’s one of the few to offer 4G LTE connectivity. Furthermore, its most absolute memorable thing is the $99.99 on-contract price point it’s flaunting right from the beginning. Seriously, you can’t go wrong with either device since they perform similarly to one another, but if savings is something that takes precedence, the Nokia Lumia 900 will be the right fit for you. If not, the extra money you’ll spend getting the iPhone 4S is justified as well.