NOKIA LUMIA 900 REVIEW

The best thing about The Nokia Lumia 900 is it's eye-popping unibody design seting a new direction for smartphone style. Its LTE speeds, vivid 4.3-inch screen, and 8-megapixel camera are high points.

The Bad thing is the Problems with call quality and minor design flaws like some gaps in the construction and weirdly placed buttons get in the way. The designer camera optics are good, but they don't live up to the hype. The phone shoots 720p video rather than 1080p video.

Nokia sorely needs a "hero" smartphone with the looks, the speeds, the specs, and a price that will hush the doubters. With the Lumia 900, Nokia proves that it has the chops to compete. We thought so at CES, where we awarded it best new smartphone, and I think so now.

But is the Lumia 900 a breakthrough device? The features are high for Windows Phone's threshold (the OS doesn't yet support multicore processors), but the phone lacks a halo-making feature like the Nokia PureView with its gasp-inducing 41-megapixel camera. While a revolutionary new feature could clinch Nokia's victory, what it has now in the Lumia 900 is the best Windows phone I've tested yet, and it's perfect for the mainstream market. Of course, my assessment could always change in a week when the HTC Titan II launches, with its whopping 16-megapixel camera, though to me, the Lumia 900 is ahead in style points. It's also half the price: $99.99 versus $199.99.

Beyond the looks, I'd recommend the Lumia 900 without hesitation to anyone considering a Windows Phone -- although I'm psychologically incapable of leaving out important caveats. I love the Lumia 900's bold look and the way that the phone's style and screen make the Windows Phone interface pop. With Windows Phone nearly identical on all handsets, Nokia really only has the hardware to control, and in terms of specs, it did a great job (mostly). LTE...check. Strong camera quality, check. Fast processor, sturdy construction, check and check. There are still some changes I'd make if Nokia had asked for my opinion, including the placement of some buttons, quality control when it comes to calls and on a couple external components, and 1080p HD video rather than 720p. However, none of these flaws would keep me from using the 900.

Design
If you imagine the cell phone section of a funky, Scandinavian design shop run by avant-garde youths, the Lumia 900 would fit right in. Its lightly sculpted unibody chassis and deliberate use of color scream "lifestyle product." Bold as an exclamation mark, the Lumia 900 has pure pop-art coursing through its electrical veins.

Features
Since Windows Phone OS pretty much behaves the same on every handset, it's the extras that are important. LTE was the most crucial feature Nokia needed to sell this phone on our shores, and it'll be one of the first two Windows phones with LTE. (The HTC Titan II, which goes on sale the same day, is the other.)

Wi-Fi, GPS, and Bluetooth are standards, though sadly, the Lumia 900 ships with Bluetooth 2.1, practically antique compared with the new Bluetooth 4.0 standard we're starting to see in mobile devices.

Windows Phone OS handily provides e-mail and social networking integration through account log-ins in the settings, an option for linking inboxes together, and support for group messaging. There's also threaded text and multimedia messaging, and a cool feature that can weave together messages sent between IM and traditional texts. Task-switching, voice search, and scan searches with Bing are also included, as are conference calling and voice dialing.

Operating system and Nokia apps
Thanks to a close partnership between Nokia and Microsoft, the Lumia 900 runs the most recent iteration of Windows Phone OS, version 7.5 Mango. As a result, the Lumia 900 can perform every software task that other Windows Phones do, too.

Unlike Android, Microsoft keeps its OS pretty locked down, so Nokia has little room to add its own flair on the software side, a strategy I appreciate for uniting the phone experience across devices, but one that makes it harder for manufacturers to stand out. Still, Nokia does make a mark with the nice Nokia Blue color theme (it's the Lumia 900 default) and with a suite of Marketplace apps that include Nokia Drive, Nokia Maps, Nokia Transit, and Nokia Contacts Transfer. This section also highlights partners' third-party apps, like ESPN and CNN. It's a shame that the Lumia 900 doesn't have Nokia's music app, Music Mix Radio, like its European counterparts, and I hope the right deals are signed soon. The absent app, which serves streaming radio and creates mixes, is similar to a Windows Phone feature, but it's also an alternative that could give Nokia some additional cred.

Cameras:

Nokia boasts that its 8-megapixel camera on the Lumia 900 has Carl Zeiss optics, which, along with its dual-LED flash and autofocus, are meant to boost image clarity. I took about a hundred photos on the 900, outside during bright daylight, inside with artificial lighting, front-facing, and in low-light situations. As with all smartphone cameras I've tested, the Lumia 900 did best in outdoor shots with abundant natural lighting. Also, like all the camera phones I tested, photos ran the gamut of excellent and very sharp to slightly fuzzy and disappointing.The camera managed to focus on a greater depth of field than other cameras, say, for instance, the iPhone 4S, but it also seemed to struggle when focusing on more-distant scenes. The Lumia 900 cast a yellow tone on most images, making the color shift away from real life. 


Who should buy it?
The LTE speeds, high-end features, and crazy-reasonable $99 price tag make the Lumia 900 a sure choice for Windows Phone fans looking for a statement piece to help them stand out. It's also great for people on the fence with Android or iOS who are interested in trying a new operating system, and for people transitioning to their very first smartphone. There's definitely a youthful vibe to the phone, but I don't think it would alienate people looking for a less in-your-face handset, especially if they chose the black version with a darker color theme.