Managed to revive this very old blog of mine... and making it into a Tech blog! (if I have the time!)


Nokia Lumia 900 review

I have got a Nokia Lumia 900 white, courtesy of Nokia Singapore, and now it's time to review this white beauty!

Hardware and Looks

Nokia Lumia 900 is one good looking phone. The body is made from a machine drilled, one-piece polycarbonate, which give the phone a very solid and durable feel. The white version has a smooth glossy outer finish, while the black and cyan version have a matte, textured finish. If you come from the Nokia N9 and Lumia 800, you'll notice that they look identical, only the 900 looked larger. But there are hardware specifications that distinguishes it from the rest. First, is the addition of the front facing camera, which provides video call functionality and for self portraits. Secondly, there is a large capacity, 1830mah battery, which listed a talktime of 7h and standby of 300h. The 3G HSDPA connection is faster too, reaching a maximum of 42mbps. That's nearly half the speed of 4G LTE!

Now, some comparison with the Lumia 800

The phone houses a 4.3 inch AMOLED clear black display, hidden stealth like behind the Gorilla glass. The display is one of the most brilliant screen I've ever used, with screen in normal brightness still clearly visible under the Singapore blazing sunlight. The Clear Black Display, as the name suggest, display blacks very well, and it blends in to the dark borders around the screen.


The OS and Software

The phone uses Windows Phone 7.5 Tango operating system.

Compared to the previous Windows Phone version, this latest version has many new and useful features out of the box, such as MMS attachment, DLNA streaming, Flip to silence and data counter. What I like about the software is the buttery smooth interface that Windows Phone is famed of. (Android 4.1 Jellybean is just playing catchup!) Virtually every action you made on the screen is being registered instantaneously on the phone. The whole Metro User Interface (UI) is minimal but slick. Almost all actions are accompanied with a smooth transition, and when in most apps or hub (like pictures hub), you glide your finder sideways to see additional content. This makes using the phone a very seamless experience.

The Lumia 900 has access to Windows Phone Marketplace, which contains more than 100 000 apps. It may look small compared to the Android and iOS app stores, but many useful apps are now in the marketplace, with more being added consistently. Some of the must-have apps are:

In categories:
Social Messenger - Whatsapp, Viber, Line
Transport: SGTransport, gMaps
Videos: Xin Videos.

Conclusion

Let's talk about the future of Lumia 900. Although the Lumia 900 won't be receiving Windows Phone 8 (WP8) update from Microsoft, this phone will still be updated to Windows Phone 7.8. What this means is that this phone will not run apps that is developed for WP8 only, but keep in mind that as WP8 phones can run Windows Phone 7.X apps, developers will be creating WP7 apps to continue reaching out to as many users as possible. Moreover, it was announced that WP7.8 will be including WP8 features like resizeable homescreen tiles, and hopefully even more features will be included.

So to buy Nokia Lumia 900 or not? That really depends on you. If you like minimalistic design and easy to use smartphone, then this phone is for you. But if you want to have a phone that is futureproof, highest end, you may want to wait for the newer Windows Phone 8 from Nokia coming this end of year.