Nokia Lumia 900 hands on

Thanks to Nokia Lebanon, I’ve been uising this Lumia 900 device for a couple of weeks now and my experience with it has been very pleasant! The Lumia 900 is one the first Nokia devices running Windows Phone operating system (version 7.5) which I honestly think is as good as the currently dominating systems, i.e. Android and iOS.

Hardware:

Although the Lumia 900 is powered by a 1.4GHz single-core processor and 512MB RAM, I was surprised by how fast the operating system is. Scrolling and moving between application was so quick and smooth.

As for the design, well there’s nothing to complain about as the phone fits almost perfectly in my hand, with the volume, sleep, and camera buttons all situated on the right side.

Display:

The display is a 4.3-inch, 800 x 480 AMOLED ClearBlack screen, and I know that’s less resolution that what you may find on other competitive phones, but I say it’s not a deal breaker. Colors on the other hand seems pretty fine and well saturated for my taste.

Camera:

That was basically my only disappointment with the device. Knowing that the Lumia 900 has an 8MP camera with a Carl Zeiss lens, you’d expect the phone will take some really good photos, but unfortunately the camera under-delivers. I don’t mean the photos are disastrous, but they’re just not too good. Below is for example 2 photos I took with an iPhone 4S and a Lumia 900 for you to notice the difference.


iPhone 4S


Lumia 900

Battery life:

On my first couple of days using the Lumia 900 the battery was lasting for like 10 hours since I had 3G turned on all the time and was spending long time toying with apps. But on the next days I started turning off 3G whenever I had WIFI around me and the battery life improved significantly improved, so at around 11PM I’m usually left with ~20% battery remaining with screen brightness set to maximum.

Windows Phone:

My experience with the operating system has been very pleasant so far. It took me like an hour to get familiar with it and start downloading some apps to make full use of the Lumia 900.

Multitasking is supported and you will be able to view the open application by a long press on the “back” located on the left. Still, it should be pointed out that every time I tried accessing an application sunning in the background I would receive the application’s splash screen… which made me wonder if that application was really working in the background or not.

The experience Windows Phone offers with applications is very nice as well, and they almost all look so gorgeous on it, but still what I believe this operating system is lacking is definitely a wider selection of games and applications like what Android and iOS have.

One this you should be aware of though is that Windows Phone 8 (the upcoming version of Windows Phone) is around the corner and the Lumia 900 is not going to support it.

All in all:

No device is flawless, and that applies to the Lumia 900 as well, but am I willing to continue using it? Definitely yes. Especially that the main applications that I’m concerned with are already available and working very well for me (WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, WordPress, etc..), and I’m pretty pretty sure many more applications will be added to the Windows Marketplace soon.

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11 Responses to Nokia Lumia 900 hands on

  1. Elie August 13, 2012 at 5:41 pm #

    i personally would love to try it, i only got one issue though. See i very much enjoy how the whole google experience is integrated in android systems, and i would hate switching to windows live and Bing.

    i could live with the windows live account instead of google mail since i could get all my emails forwarded, but r u satisfied with bing being ur standard search engine and also not being able to use google maps?

    • Rami August 14, 2012 at 10:33 am #

      Well, both of them e-mail and calendar can of course be synchronized with your Google account…
      As for google maps, I personally consider consider Nokia Maps and Nokia Drive to be much more better, especially that the maps are saved on your phone and you get to use them even if you’re offline.
      Having bing as my standard search engine sucks :P, I fire IE and go to google.com everytime I want to search for something..

  2. Gilles August 13, 2012 at 10:29 pm #

    I’ve had this phone here in Canada for more than a month now.

    A new firmware update is coming out soon with improvements to the camera along with improvements and some features.

    I personally like Windows Phone OS and how fluid and simple it is. My phone before this was the Nokia X7 running Symbian and the Lumia class is far more superior and attractive.

  3. Gilles August 13, 2012 at 10:32 pm #

    How’s Lebanon’s map in Nokia Drive by the way?

    • Rami August 14, 2012 at 10:29 am #

      Nokia Drive is awesome here in Lebanon, I’ve been using the Nokia maps ever since I purchased my E72 few years ago, it provides turn by turn guidance and I have tried it several times both inside and outside Beirut. I even used it once to drive from Batroun up to Ehmej and then all the way down to Jbeil.

      • Sunny August 14, 2012 at 4:18 pm #

        Hello, I’m a one person who has willing to buy this, Lumia 900, in Lebanon. I just wonder the price of this phone and Where I can buy this…
        Many thanks..

        • Rami August 14, 2012 at 11:33 pm #

          To my knowledge the Lumia 900 has been available in Lebanon as of this week and selling for around $600

          • Sunny August 15, 2012 at 9:22 am #

            Many thanks for your information~~

  4. gil August 25, 2012 at 6:39 am #

    Where can we buy it???… I want one i just cant wait to get rid of my htc sensation it sucks…from which store did u get ure phone???

    • Rami August 27, 2012 at 10:33 am #

      I didn’t buy it, Nokia Lebanon gave it to me a while ago for a trial period. But to my knowledge, it should be widely available in the market by now.

  5. gil August 28, 2012 at 2:45 am #

    How much do u think it would cost?? I couldn’t find it at class nor khoury cell are there specific places that cell nokia phones?? They should have it

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