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.
The usual retail package
The Lumia 900 comes in a box similar to what the Lumia 800 and N9 were packaged in. We found a basic set of accessories inside. There is a wall charger - the same stylish round piece of the N9 and the Lumia 800. It comes in matching white color and uses the supplied USB cable. There's a set of earphones too this time (a single-piece headset with a Call button) - AT&T's Lumia 900 had none in the bundle. The last thing to find inside the box is the microSIM eject tool.
Nokia Lumia 900 retail package
Nokia Lumia 900 360-degree view
The Lumia 900 looks exactly the same as the Lumia 800 but duly scaled up to accommodate the bigger 4.3" screen. The most notable difference is the added front camera, if you don't count the fact that the Lumia 900 is taller, wider and heavier. At 127.8 x 68.5 x 11.5 mm, single-handed operation is trouble-free. This is by no means the biggest phone out there. The new Android flagships and the HTC Titan II have considerably larger screens. None of them weighs as much as the Lumia 900 though - at 160g it has a solid feel in hand, which is much appreciated.
Design and build quality
The design of the Nokia Lumia 900 should be quite familiar by now, which is not to say boring. It couldn't have had better inspiration than the Nokia Lumia 800 and, ultimately, the N9. The simple but compelling aesthetics are purely driven by function for a package that's beautiful to both look at and use.
Nokia Lumia 900 next to the MeeGo-happy N9
The Nokia Lumia 900 is being offered with four color schemes - the traditional black, white, magenta and cyan. The white version we're testing stands out with its glossy ceramic surface. The matte finish of the rest is more practical perhaps - in terms of both grip and durability, but a matte white body would've been almost impossible to keep clean.
Build quality is flawless as always, it's just that the white Nokia Lumia 900 doesn't have the heavy-duty looks of its siblings using other paintjobs. It trades them for an extra bit of sophistication. The phone still appears ready to take a lot of abuse, as it is a blend of polycarbonate and Corning Gorilla Glass. The body is not painted the old fashioned way but it's rather made of plastic that has the same color in depth, scratches and marks from accidental drops won't stand out as much.
The screen is a major improvement over Lumia 800's unit
We've always said that AMOLED screens and Windows Phone OS are a perfect match. The Nokia Lumia 900's display is yet another proof. The 4.3" unit impresses with infinite contrast and deep blacks. In a manner befitting a Windows Phone flagship, Nokia Lumia 900's screen has dropped the PenTile matrix, found in the unit of the Lumia 800, so, despite its lower pixel density on paper, it is nicer to look at from up close.
Here go the Nokia Lumia 900 results from our display tests. You can find more about the testing procedures over here.
| Display test | 50% brightness | 100% brightness | ||||
| Black, cd/m2 | White, cd/m2 | Black, cd/m2 | White, cd/m2 | |||
| Nokia Lumia 900 | 0 | 347 | ∞ | 0 | 425 | ∞ |
| Nokia N9 | 0 | 349 | ∞ | 0 | 596 | ∞ |
| Nokia Lumia 800 | 0 | 108 | ∞ | 0 | 369 | ∞ |
| LG Optimus 4X HD | 0.34 | 369 | 1077 | 0.68 | 750 | 1102 |
| HTC One X | 0.15 | 200 | 1375 | 0.39 | 550 | 1410 |
| Samsung I9300 Galaxy S III | 0 | 174 | ∞ | 0 | 330 | ∞ |
| HTC One S | 0 | 177 | ∞ | 0 | 386 | ∞ |
| Sony Xperia S | - | - | - | 0.48 | 495 | 1038 |
