The Nokia Lumia 900 with the windows phone 7.5 is now available in India for Rs. 32,999 but doesn’t seem like a worthy buy. First of all it is the cost that is just too high and the Lumia 900 cannot be upgraded to the latest Windows Phone 8.
Specification seems awesome, the price a way too high, but users should avoid buying this handset and wait for the Lumia 920 which will support the latest Windows Phone 8 OS (WP8). Another reason why WP8 will not work on the Lumia 900 is because the hardware is a bit outdated.
WP8 has built in support for certain hardware like microSD and NFC, both of which are missing on the Nokia Lumia 900 and could cause compatibility issues. As I mentioned before this is an awesome looking handset with excellent features minus the price and the WP8 support. I will not mind the missed out WP8 update but at least Nokia could have done some justice with the price tag.
Design and Display
No doubt the phone looks great especially because of the colour combination and the AMOLED screen. There are 3 dedicated physical buttons on the right side, speaker-out at the bottom and on the top there is the micro USB port and 3.5 mm jack. The rear side is completely plain with Nokia logo, camera and LED flash. The handset is 11.5 mm thin with a weight of 160 grams.
The AMOLED screen is 4.3 inches with Corning Gorilla Glass for extra protection. The resolution is 800×480 pixels (WVGA) with 16M colours. The Lumia 900 is available in Cyan, White and Black colour options. The Cyan and the Black looks pretty good with the black AMOLED screen.
OS, Processor and memory
The Lumia 900 runs on Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) OS and can be upgraded to Windows Phone 7.8, however it will never get the Windows Phone 8 update. The OS sails smoothly on the 1.4 GHz single core Scorpion processor from Qualcomm with Adreno 205 GPU.
The internal memory is at a massive 16GB and RAM is 512MB, good enough, however you cannot add additional storage space as there is no MicroSD slot.
Connectivity
This windows phone supports 3G (HSDPA = 42Mbps, HSUPA = 5.76Mbps), 2G (EDGE/GPRS), Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1, GPS that works with Nokia / Bing maps, DLNA support, FM radio and 3.5mm audio jack.
Camera
There is an 8 megapixel camera on the rear side (carl zeiss optics lens). The camera is auto focus and loaded with features such as manual exposure, white balance, Geo-Tagging, touch focus, 3x digital zoom, image editor and dual LED flash.
There is a secondary camera placed on the front with a 1.0 megapixel resolution. The rear camera is capable of recording videos in 1280×720 pixels resolution (HD) at 30fps. The still image and video quality is really good.
Others
This handset supports many audio and video formats, it also comes loaded with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Windows Live, Hotmail and IM apps. You also get access to windows market place also called Windows Phone Store with around 100K apps to search from.
There is one issue with the windows OS and that is you cannot transfer files using Bluetooth (BFT – Bluetooth File transfer), probably this is done to avoid piracy. But anyway you should be aware of this limitation.
Battery
The Li-ion 1830 mAh battery that this phone houses gives talktime of about 8 hours and standby time of up to 300 hours.
Nokia Lumia 900 review
This phone is good but it does not make sense releasing it, now. Also window phone 8 is already out and Lumia 900 cannot be upgraded to the latest one. Moreover Nokia has already announced the Lumia 920 and the Lumia 820 handsets both running on the WP8 OS. And there is not much of a pricing difference either. It will make sense to go for the latest technology if you really want to spend over 30K and a few thousands extra would really not matter. If you can’t go for the Micromax A90 for 13K you get the same features with android icing or wait for few more weeks for a dual core version of the same which will be priced under Rs. 16K almost 50% cheaper than the Lumia 900.
Nokia Lumia 900 Key features and Specifications
- Single SIM, Single core 1.4GHz CPU (Qualcomm Scorpion) + Adreno 205 GPU.
- Windows Phone 7.5 – upgradeable to version 7.8.
- 4.3 inch Corning Gorilla Glass AMOLED (ClearBlack) screen with 800x480p resolution – 16M colours.
- 16GB internal storage and 512MB RAM.
- 8MP rear AF camera with dual LED flash and 1MP front camera. HD video recording supported.
- 3G, 2G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, Audio jack, DLNA and micro USB port.
- Apps pre-installed : IE 9 browser, Nokia / Bing maps, SNS (Facebook / twitter etc), Windows live, hotmail, Office 365 and IM.
- Sensors: Ambient light, compass, 3D accelerometer, gyroscope and proximity.
- Non Removable Battery: 1830 mAh – TT = 8 hours | ST = 12 days.
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