Introduction
It took the Nokia Lumia 900 just a few days to top the US sales
charts and see delighted handshakes quickly turn into group hugs, as
Nokia, Microsoft and AT&T, which carries it exclusively stateside,
were busy celebrating the flagship's performance in recent months.
The Lumia 900 has finally made the trip across the pond but it's not
the return home it must've dreamed of. Not quite the triumphant welcome
from thousands flocking to retail outlets and carriers. Yes, there's a
big question mark hanging over the global version of the Nokia Lumia
900. The news that Windows Phone 8 is out of reach has taken the shine
off its appeal. But its character is intact - and the Lumia 900 has
enough of that to spare.
Nokia Lumia 900 official photos
A big, quality screen, fluid and stylish OS and premium build are all
sprinkled with Nokia's magic in a package that's made to impress. We've
been there already - and we don't mean the review we have of the Lumia
900 for AT&T. After all, it's a Lumia 800 all over again, only the
screen got bigger. And yet, we are delighted to meet this smartphone
again - and we'll give it that, it looks stunning in white.
You'll also be happy to know that this time around we're putting the
Lumia 900 to all our usual tests. AT&T's Lumia 900 was reviewed away
from the office but this one will not simply walk in and out of our
labs without getting a taste of our torture routine.
Key features
- Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support
- Quad-band 3G with 42 Mbps HSDPA and 5.7 Mbps HSUPA support
- 4.3" 16M-color AMOLED capacitive touchscreen of 480 x 800 pixel resolution
- Scratch resistant Gorilla glass display with anti-glare polarizer
- 8 megapixel autofocus camera with dual LED flash, 720p@27fps video recording and fast f/2.2 lens
- 1MP front camera
- Windows Phone 7.5 OS (Mango), upgradeable to WP 7.8
- 1.4GHz Scorpion CPU, Adreno 205 GPU, Qualcomm MSM8255 chipset, 512MB of RAM
- Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
- Non-painted polycarbonate unibody
- GPS receiver with A-GPS support and free lifetime voice-guided navigation
- Digital compass
- 16GB of on-board storage
- Active noise cancellation with a dedicated mic
- Built-in accelerometer and proximity sensor
- Standard 3.5 mm audio jack; FM Radio with RDS
- microUSB port
- Bluetooth v2.1 with A2DP and EDR
- Impressively deep and coherent SNS integration throughout the interface
Main disadvantages
- Won't get WP 8
- No USB mass storage (Zune only file management and sync)
- No native video calls
- Non-user-replaceable battery
- No memory card slot (and no 64GB version like the N9)
- microSIM card slot
- No native DivX/XviD support, videos have to be transcoded by Zune
The newly announced Windows Phone 8 has given us plenty to look
forward to, but a WP8 upgrade is not on the cards for the Nokia Lumia
900. WP 7.8 is coming later this year to all compatible single-core
devices and it will be the last update they are about to get. Both Nokia
and Microsoft promise to continue the support though they will most
likely be focusing their efforts on multiple-core WP8 smartphones.
Nokia Lumia 900 live pictures
But don't close the page on the Lumia 900 just yet. The Windows Phone
experience is impressive even on single-core chipsets and the OS is
beautifully simple and charmingly social. The proprietary apps are a
major lift too - Nokia Reading was recently added to the familiar Drive,
Maps and Music.
It will be a while before the new WP8 devices start hitting the
market, so the Nokia Lumia 900 will be the Windows Phone flagship for a
good few months. With a shadow always looming over it, the Lumia 900
will stand tall or fall short. But it won't go unnoticed.
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