To understand the gamble the company's making with the Lumia 900, one need only look to a different critically acclaimed, yet interminably stalled overseas import: Kylie Minogue. That foreign pop siren, a music industry veteran, has repeatedly did not empty mainstream American wallets together with her scattered hits, despite enjoying chart domination around the globe. Indeed the formula for US success is a fickle one. Irrespective of the product category, the crossover membrane can sometimes prove too thick to permanently breach, often leading to a "one and done" mentality marked by an inevitable retreat to more conciliatory European shores.
For the time being, though, it seems that Nokia's going all in, able to see its folie à deux with Microsoft through to the tip. Indeed, with an irresistible on-contract price of $99, it'd seem both parties are relying on this to be the mass market magic bullet they've sorely needed. So, can the Lumia 900, a single-core 1.4GHz handset hampered by a so-so 800 x 480 display, prove this tech alliance wasn't ill-struck in fact- Can an exquisite industrial design and simplified UI overcome seemingly modest specs- Will Nokia finally end up retreating to its overseas kingdom- Abandon those fanboy caps all ye who tag along, as we put this Finnish smartphone under the new lights.
Hardware
Given that it borrows from the Lumia 800's quirky design, you'd assume your initial brush with the 900 will be love at the beginning sight. You'd think that, but you would be wrong. Something's slightly amiss here, and it took us a moment to hone in on what, exactly, is keeping the 900 from a front row seat within the wow department. Eventually, though, it came to us: that screen! Forget its humble 800 x 480 resolution at the moment; that isn't the glaring flaw. What kept us scratching our heads was Nokia's decision to nix the 800's sinuously tapered curves, that chassis whose glass panel seamlessly bled into the polycarbonate hull. It's gone, and for no good reason. Instead, users are treated to a jarring experience: a border now surrounds that 4.3-inch display, causing it to protrude awkwardly from that shapely, cyan body. Suffice to mention, it makes for an unflattering first impression.
So, that's ding one: some unequivocal ball dropping on Nokia's part. Are you ready for cultured con number two- This transformation is more subtle and again, it wasn't for the most efficient valuable. If you have ever held an 800 in hand, you ways premium it feels. Inevitably, then, you'll notice the change on this handset's texture. A body that used to be smooth and polished has grown rougher in its journey around the Atlantic. For sure, most consumers it is going to be none the wiser, having never handled the Lumia that started all of it.
For essentially the mostsome of the most part, Nokia's kept the final layout of the buttons and ports intact. The amount rocker, power button and dedicated camera keys still lie along the proper-hand side of the device, leaving the other edge clean. Thankfully, though, these flush, metal buttons have benefited from a bit of tightening -- they feel more rigid than those at the 800, and also you won't encounter any loosening or jiggle. On the base, the speaker melds beautifully into the polycarbonate hull, making hand obstruction unlikely. Meanwhile, uncovered ports for a three.5mm headphone jack and micro-USB socket sit up straight top.
The unit's micro-SIM may also be accessed here. However, Nokia retooled the device so you now not ought to depress, flip after which slide out that slot's flimsy drawer. Instead, there's an included door key that, when inserted, causes the sealed tray to come out. SIM-swappers might take issue with this admittedly inelegant solution, as it'll force them to maintain vigilant watch of an easily lost sliver of metal. For this reason, we'd advise prospective owners to maintain a bunch of pins on the ready.
Flip the telephone on its face and you're met with a uniquely contoured back, broken only by a metallic ellipse housing an 8-megapixel shooter with a f/2.2 Carl Zeiss lens and accompanying dual LED flash. In a remarkable show of restraint, AT&T kept its logo-happy paws off, allowing users to enjoy the 900's naked beauty. The camera module should trigger some déjà vu: you've seen it not once, but twice, inside the N9 and Lumia 800. A tour of the device's front finds a VGA camera, ambient sensors, a trio of capacitive Windows Phone buttons and the one instance of branding -- double billing for Nokia and AT&T.
For high-shelf phones, an HD display has become a must, be it qHD or 720p -- just study the Galaxy Nexus or HTC One X. Sadly, fans of the Windows Phone experience have needed to make do with a software-dictated resolution cap of 800 x 480 -- a frustrating limit that on paper, not less than, keeps even the worthiest Mango handsets positioned below other flagships.
Still, with the inclusion of Nokia's ClearBlack AMOLED display tech, prospective owners should be treated to an extremely bright and very saturated screen that's refreshingly liberated from the 800's PenTile trappings. Even if viewing it outdoors in direct sunlight, we had no difficulty discerning the contents of our live tiles or maybe the camera interface. Granted, we had the brightness cranked to the max, but contrast this readability with the high level of glare commonplace on competing handsets and also you must be ready to overlook the Lumia 900's graphical shortcomings. Truly, the simplicity of the Windows Phone UI -- specifically the undemanding design of its icons -- works well within these constraints. It is only while you visit image-heavy websites or try to view the shots on your photo library, that this pitfall becomes impossible to disregard.
0 Windows Phone Mango, as we've said over and over, is an operating system constrained by an unfortunate combination of inflexible spec requirements. To understand its ease of use is to like it, but that clean UI comes at a single-core price. True, WP handsets with beefier CPUs are reportedly within the pipeline, though what they're and when they'll launch is anybody's guess. In the interim, we must cope with the 900's 1.4GHz Snapdragon processor and 512MB of RAM, neither of which must be underestimated.Windows Phone favors the charm of its animations over the immediacy of loading applications.
That preamble aside, the Lumia 900's performance is remarkably smooth. Note we didn't say fast -- not that it doesn't display considerable speed when piloting through its live tile homescreen or app list. No, it's definitely speedy, but there isn't a arguing that the handset moves at its own fluid pace. It seems that as though all WP navigation takes on a consistent cadence; it is a UI that favors the charm of its animations over the immediacy of loading applications. Oddly, too, though it consistently scores higher than the Lumia 800 in benchmarks, it seems like it's operating at a more leisurely pace: it doesn't launch apps quite as promptly, and scrolling isn't as brisk. Where that more diminutive phone zips, this one floats. It can frustrate users familiar with lightning-quick smartphone responses, but eventually the 900's flow wins you over until you completely forget it was a distraction within the first place.
| Nokia Lumia 900 | Samsung Focus S | Nokia Lumia 800 | HTC Titan | |
| WP Bench | 92 | 91.54 | 86 | 96 |
| Battery rundown | 4:29 | 4:24 | 2:40 | 3:00 |
| SunSpider (ms, lower numbers are better) | 6,902 | 6,914 | 7,200 | 6,500 |
Stacked up against its WP comrades old and comparatively new, including mid-rangers and high-end handsets, the 900 disappoints. With a middling SunSpider score, a WP Bench result that fails to best last year's Titan and battery life on par with Samsung's (non-LTE) Focus S, the 900 safely earns the underachiever crown. It's disheartening to work out this highly anticipated phone fall prey to whatever discord resulted from AT&T, Nokia and Microsoft's combined software broth.
Web browsing at the Lumia 900 is handled well by the native Internet Explorer app, although, as highlighted by that SunSpider result up there, full desktop pages can take a little time to completely render -- about 30 seconds on average. We pulled off pinch to zoom with no hitch, without white spaces or checker-boarding.
1
It was Andy Lees, Microsoft's former Windows Phone chief, who claimed late last year that the company's resistance to issue LTE-capable handsets stemmed from a want to create longer-lasting, more power efficient handsets. Remember the Thunderbolt- Apparently, so does Redmond, and although that specific misstep belonged to HTC, Android and Verizon, the lesson was not lost at the WP team. Determined to vault past criticism of releasing devices ill-equipped to address the demands of AT&T's 4G LTE network, the Lumia 900 hits shelves with a 1,840mAh battery in tow. Seems like it might be enough and it's... barely enough.
When compared with each of the Lumias that experience come before it, the 900's charge does nearly double duty, holding on a decent four hours and 29 minutes. That's still hardly impressive, obviously, but recall that this was with a video playing in an incessant loop. Under the duress of real-world usage -- that's with the brightness at its medium setting, Twitter set to sync at 15 min, one push mail account and GPS and WiFi connected -- we were capable of squeeze practically two full days from one charge. Utilize Mango's battery saver settings and we're convinced moderate to light users will enjoy nearly 72 hours of productivity.
2 Like a beacon of hope shining in the course of this less-than-perfect storm comes the Lumia 900's 8-megapixel rear shooter. Nokia's imaging know-how, cemented within the outing of its 41-megapixel 808 PureView, elevates this device beyond the flavorlessness of its workhorse performance and right into a realm that quite nearly rivals the heights attained by Samsung's Galaxy S II and Apple's iPhone 4S. Imbued with an identical f/2.2 Carl Zeiss lens outfitting both the N9 and 800, the 900 should delight novices and pros alike with an intelligent sensor in a position to arrestingly vivid images. Hold down the dedicated camera key and you may wake the telephone from sleep on to the camera app -- a handy shortcut when photographic inspiration unexpectedly strikes. And while the shutter can easily be triggered by this exact same hardware key, you may also tap onscreen, hold to focus and snap, allowing the sensor to regulate for the scene, white balance, ISO and exposure. Otherwise you can manually tweak these settings, in addition to swap out the 4:3, 8-megapixel resolution for 16:9, 7-megapixel shots.Nokia's imaging know-how elevates this device beyond its workhorse performance and right into a realm that quite nearly rivals the heights attained by Samsung's Galaxy S II and Apple's iPhone 4S.
3 4 5 6 7 The 900's imaging software doesn't quite match the very best optimization at the N9, but it surely certainly outranks the 800. As you will see within the gallery of sample shots, the phone's module displays a knack for depth of field, crisp replication of detail and balanced color. Whenever you can not appreciate this astonishing performance on that 800 x 480 display, you'll relax and smile when those pics stream across your desktop.
Video at the 900 performs just as admirably, with the telephone set to record at 720p. just a few hiccups did surface during playback -- you'll notice the sensor occasionally adjust the focal point as we pan 180 degrees. Audio clarity also suffers slightly, but we'll chalk that as much as the high winds howling inside the background as we filmed.
Software
Users knowledgeable about Mango's underpinnings (our full Windows Phone 7.5 review is here) can move along -- there's nothing new to look here. But whilst Tango's suite of UI improvements wait inside the wings, prospective Lumia 900 owners can still savor this older, slightly over-ripened software. Clean design abounds on this cellphone OS for dummies -- and that is the reason a compliment. From the wide-blocked live tile homescreen to the easily accessible and alphabetically categorized app menu, each of the complicated and unnecessary bits that may confound the fewer nimble smartphone user are tucked out of sight. All told, the experience is incredibly intuitive and fluid, as we've said before, though it might frustrate power users with its loss of personalization options.
8 To Microsoft's credit, the 900 never lags or stutters, defaulting instead to that measured, graceful flow we described earlier. Certain applications load appreciably quicker than others, particularly native ones, but as a result of that pristine, visual uniformity decreed by Microsoft, even the slowest of apps manages to dazzle. Gone, too, are the times when WP critics could deride Redmond's smartphone ecosystem for a paucity of those pinnable tiles, as there at the moment are over 40,000 80,000 apps available in its Marketplace. Nokia and AT&T have done their best to tread lightly with the bloat, choosing to pre-load the Lumia 900 with just a dozen applications, like Code Scanner, myWireless, U-Verse Mobile, Xbox Live, ESPN, Tango and Maps. Blessedly, 80 percent of those are removable, so while this handset may ship with a plump software load, users not less than have the ability to scrub it up and benefit from that allotted 16GB of storage.The 900 never lags or stutters, defaulting instead to a measured, graceful flow.
In a welcome turn of events, Nokia may be releasing the 900 to the general public with Internet Sharing enabled from the outset; an option that was sorely missing on T-Mobile's Lumia 710 and the unlocked 800. So, in the event you commit to opt in for this handset and happen to name one in every of AT&T's 4G LTE or HSPA+ coverage areas home, you shouldn't have any problem tethering on your laptop and enjoying the liberty of a real mobile hotspot -- your data plan, willing.
Network
9 This is Windows Phone's first dance with LTE and, despite being late to the ball, the Lumia 900 still gets to surf along those radio waves -- they're just not as incredibly blazing. Speeds have diminished somewhat since AT&T's 4G LTE network officially launched in Ny city, owing undoubtedly to an uptick in consumer adoption. Considering performance consistently maxed out at about 21Mbps down and 8Mbps up, users wouldn't have much to gripe about, with typical downlink results ranging between 17Mbps to 20Mbps and uplink at 5Mbps to 7Mbps, perfect for streaming Netflix or sharing large files over SkyDrive. Default to an HSPA+ only zone and people downlink speeds will hover around 5Mbps to 8Mbps -- still greater than adequate for many uses.
Wrap-up
0 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 primary 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 attractiveness and function strengths, were more mobile welterweights than the rest: they aimed too low and too wide to capture the general public imagination.
This Lumia, though, was imagined to change all of that, backed by a substantial marketing push and better-end ingredients. While we wouldn't color this AT&T debut as a failure, we wouldn't call it a crowning achievement either. Excluding a stated preference and dedication to Microsoft's Windows Phone OS, savvy geeks at the cusp of the following smartest thing won't necessarily want what the 900 has to give, especially in light of that other spotlight-stealing flagship, the only X. On no account are these phones on equal footing. It's just that Nokia could have shot itself within the foot, succumbing to the dangers of hyperbolic quicksand far sooner than launch day. Much ado about nothing- Not quite, the Lumia 900 has its strengths, coming mainly within the style of optics, but it is the overall package and function that's just too plain, too ordinary, too dependable to merit the haughty flagship halo it aspires to emanate.
In that context, the Lumia 900 comes off as a different decent offering on AT&T's increasingly bountiful LTE lineup. Dispense of Espoo's rose-colored glasses and the case for this middle of the street Lumia becomes somewhat clearer. Clear out the selling noise and concentrate on its superb performance as a competent point-and-shoot and now you have got a winner. Toss in those considerable network speeds and default access to Internet Sharing and, suddenly, it is a shining star. Sprinkle all of that with an enticing polycarbonate case, a saturated and legible display and the magic eraser of its $99 on two-year contract pricing and, ipso facto, you could have a no-brainer purchase staring you inside the face. Does the Lumia 900 fail to search out its place amongst other smartphone hulks- Well, yes. But again, it's playing in a league of Windows Phone's single-core own. With the careful cultivation of a cultish, fashion-conscious consumer following, however, this is able to rather well be Nokia's greatest hit.
Myriam Joire contributed to this review.
From WhatNewsToday.net
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