The Nokia Lumia 900 is a critical release for both Nokia and Microsoft.
The former is aiming to turn around dwindling market share, while the
latter is trying to compete with popular iOS and Android rivals. In the
Lumia 900, Nokia has produced the best Windows Phone device ever, but is
it enough to steal the limelight away from Apple and Google?
A gorgeous, polycarbonate block
The Nokia Lumia 900 is basically a larger Lumia 800.
The Lumia 800 is one of the best looking smartphones on the market and
the Lumia 900 is no different. The phone is again constructed from solid
polymer, the same material often found in ice hockey helmets. The Nokia
Lumia 900 will be available in black, white, cyan and magenta colours,
though its not yet known what colour variants will be sold in Australia.
Like both the N9
and the Lumia 800, the Lumia 900's polycarbonate casing is coloured all
the way through in the manufacturing process so scratches, dents or
marks from everyday use will not show up. The construction and build
quality of the Lumia 900 is first class with no creaks, rattles or
moving parts. Combined with a weight that is light enough not to be a
burden, yet heavy enough to provide a premium feel, the Lumia 900 is the
near perfect balance of size and weight. In a mobile world where many
smartphones look like identical plastic slabs, the subtle curves and
vibrant colours of the Nokia Lumia 900 are a welcome breath of fresh
air. This is without doubt one of the best looking and most elegant
smartphones on the market today.
Windows Phone: The good, the bad and the ugly
Using
the Lumia 900 is an almost identical experience to every other Windows
Phone on the market. This isn't such a bad thing as the Windows Phone
platform is slick, modern, user friendly and smooth. We didn't
experience any lag during general use, applications opened swiftly with
no delay and most core tasks are easy to access and use on a daily
basis. As Windows Phone devices are very similar when it comes to
software, you can read our full review of the Windows Phone 7.5 operating system here.
Due
to Microsoft's strict hardware and software requirements,
vendor-included apps are the main differentiators between Windows Phone
devices. One of the biggest selling points for Nokia's Windows Phone
devices is Nokia Drive, a free turn-by-turn GPS navigator. The app is
completely free and allows you to install street maps for most
countries. Once installed, you can use the map without the need for a
mobile Internet connection. The Australian map we downloaded was a 200MB
file, while the English UK voice was 4.1MB. The Drive app is basic, but
it's easy to use and effective. The larger screen of the Lumia 900
really makes a difference during navigation compared to the Lumia 800.
The Lumia 900 also includes a free 25GB of SkyDrive storage, but this is
a feature available on all Windows Phones, not just Nokia ones.
Nokia Music and Nokia Maps are other apps that are
available on the Lumia 900. We particularly like the MX Radio feature in
the music app that allows you to listen to free music streams sorted by
genre, and we prefered to use Nokia Maps over Microsoft's own Bing Maps
solution. A cool feature in Nokia Maps is the ability to quickly access
popular places around your current location. You can view a basic
"about" description from TimeOut and WCities, explore places by specific
category and even see nearby places appear on a map around you, clearly
denoted by a categorised icon.
Disappointingly,
the Lumia 900 offers less than stellar mobile Internet performance. The
browser feels slick and has all the features we've come to know and
love on smartphones including pinch to zoom capability, smooth scrolling
(still far better than any Android phone) and the ability to open
multiple tabs. However, it loads Web pages slower than the Galaxy Nexus and the iPhone 4S
when compared directly over the same Wi-Fi network, it doesn't render
pages as well as most of its rivals, and opening a new tab is buried
three screen taps deep in the settings menu. In addition to text being
hard to read unless zoomed in, the Lumia 900 also struggled to display
some fonts on various Web sites we frequent.
Speaking of the Galaxy Nexus, the Lumia 900 (just
like the 800 before it) shares an issue with Android's flagship: the
volume of its speaker is quite low. This is particularly telling when
using the hands-free speakerphone during a phone call, but it also
affects the volume of ring tones, too. Even with volume turned all the
way up, we often missed notifications when the phone was in our pocket.
The
Windows Phone platform has plenty of popular, third-party applications
like Facebook, Twitter, Skype, WhatsApp, Rdio, eBay and Evernote.
However, the number of apps is low when compared directly with its
rivals, Apple's iOS platform and Google's Android OS. We have no doubt
the Windows Marketplace will satisfy most users and will only continue
to grow, but at this stage it is somewhat limited compared to its
competitors.
Perhaps the biggest disadvantage of
the Windows Phone platform is the reliance on Microsoft's Zune software
for file management. While the same criticism can be aimed at the iPhone
and iTunes combination, at least Apple has iCloud to fall back on.
Windows Phone has no such backup option that will save important content
like your messages, call logs, settings and app data. Thankfully,
Microsoft's SkyDrive service does work well for documents and photos and
$11.99 per month for an unlimited ZunePass subscription is a nice option if you regularly listen to music on your phone.
Average camera but decent battery life
The
Nokia Lumia 900 has an 8-megapixel camera with a dual LED flash and a
Carl Zeiss lens. The image quality won't match the quality of the
unrivalled Nokia N8
but the Lumia 900 definitely takes a decent photo, provided you are
backed by good lighting. Image noise is an issue with many of our test
photos appearing grainy and washed out, though the level of detail is
sharp. The camera doubles as a 720p HD video recorder and will record at
30 frames per second.
The Nokia Lumia 900's polycarbonate design means
the phone doesn't have a removable battery, uses a micro-SIM card rather
than a full-sized one and doesn't have a microSD card slot for extra
storage. The Lumia 900 only has 16GB of internal memory, which could be
an issue for those who desire lots of storage space.
The
Nokia Lumia 900 is a dual-channel HSDPA phone, which means it offers
theoretical maximum data speeds of 42 megabits per second (Mbps) when
using Telstra's Next G network in Australia. Though you'll never see
these speeds in real use, our Lumia 900 review unit regularly managed to
achieve download speeds of up to 15 megabits per second (Mbps).
The
Nokia Lumia 900's battery life is about average for a modern day
smartphone, so you should be able to use it for almost a full day before
needing a recharge. With heavy use we managed to drain the battery well
before the end of the day, though battery performance will depend on a
number of factors including usage patterns and 3G network performance
and coverage.
Nokia is expected to launch the Lumia 900 in the coming weeks. The Lumia 900 can also be purchased outright through Australian
online store MobiCity.
