By Introducing the Lumia 900, Nokia is effectively bringing a larger, 4G LTE, version of their Lumia 800 to the market.
It has just about all the qualities of its predecessor, but the larger
size changes the user experience slightly, and the battery life seems to
be better out of the box. The Nokia Lumia 900 builds on the new industrial
introduced by the Nokia N9 which uses a single bloc of polycarbonate
that effectively becomes a cradle for the rest of the phone. This makes
it extremely resistant to shocks, while giving it a soft texture. The
question is: are you ready to try Windows Phone?
Context
We all use smartphones differently, so it's important that I tell you what I do with my smartphone: I typically check
my email often with the built-in email app (via Microsoft Exchange),
and I reply moderately because the virtual keyboard is slow, even on
large displays. I browse the web several times a day to check on news sites, but I rarely watch movies or play music. I don't call much - maybe 10mn a day, if at all.
On
the "apps" side, I have a couple of social networks, a receipts
manager, but I rarely play games or do something super-intensive. This
usage pattern will affect battery life and the perception of what
features are useful.
External design
The Nokia Lumia
900 inherits of everything that is great about the Lumia 800 smartphone.
The 900 body is made of a single block of polycarbonate, using a
similar molding process. All the internals are then inserted into the
device, then the phone is closed off by the display. The result is a
very soft, curvy, and organic shape that fits very well in the hand. If
you wonder: this does not feel like "cheap plastic" at all.
The
main difference with the Nokia Lumia 800 (besides the size) is that the
gorilla glass that tops the display does not have a curved edge. As I
hinted in my Lumia 800, the rounded edge was a nice feature, but one
that I could do easily do without. It looks like Nokia agrees, although I
don't know exactly why this design element has been removed
At
the top, you can find the micro-SIM tray, which now requires a tool (a
pin) to remove. Next to the SIM tray, there's a micro-USB port to
sync/charge. I like the fact that the port is open, and easily
accessible. Finally, there is also a standard 3.5mm audio connector.
Note that when cables are located at the top or bottom, they don't
hinder the normal manipulation of the phone. I find the top location is
convenient when using headphones with the smartphone in a pocket.
The right side has several buttons, which include volume controls, power and camera shutter. I'm usually not a big fan of having a lot of buttons
of the side because of possible accidental key presses, but so far this
hasn't been a problem. Finally, I'd like to add that I would prefer
having a Power button that is at the top or in the front of the phone, as this is the single most important button on any smartphone.
The
loudspeaker is located at the bottom, which is typically a good
strategy to obtain a loud sound, even if it makes it hard to do stereo
etc… The Lumia 900 speaker works remarkably well, and I've been asked to lower the volume at the office, which is always a good sign for a smartphone speaker.
Display
I liked the AMOLED display on the Nokia Lumia 800, but the larger
size on the Lumia 900 makes it even better from many points of view.
First, it's a bit easier to read on. Secondly, it's easier to type with
the virtual keyboard because the leys are a bit bigger.
In terms
of image quality, this AMOLED display is beautiful and well-tuned. Out
of the box, the colors aren't too "flashy", and everything looks bright
and contrasted.
Windows Phone
Windows Phone currently holds a relatively small market share,
and if you have not tried it, you may ask yourself a number of
questions. I'll try to provide an overview of its strengths and
weaknesses as an Operating System (OS), then I'll cover key applications
in the next section.
You may remember that some years ago, Windows CE which became Windows Mobile, held a large market share
in the smartphone segment. Back then, I believe that Microsoft saw it
as an IT tool. With the rise of the iPhone, then Android, Windows Mobile
quickly lost market share as its user interface was clunky and rather
inefficient. The Windows Mobile devices were also seen as being
relatively slow and power-inefficient.
It all changed when
Microsoft decided to put Windows Mobile under new management. What came
out of it was a new operating system with a user interface based off the
excellent “Metro” design, which is now making its way to Windows 8.
Windows Mobile became Windows Phone, and the current version is 7.5. The
bottom-line is: forget about Windows Mobile. Windows Phone is a
completely new beast.
Windows Phone is very “fast and fluid” (the
official motto at Microsoft these days). It is remarkable that
regardless of which hardware it runs on (including low-end phones with
only 256MB of RAM), the user interface remains absolutely fluid. The
user-interface is also simple and clear, and the typography is
beautiful. In a nutshell, these are the strengths of Windows Phone.
But
it is not perfect: Windows Phone has less applications than iOS or
Android, even among the most popular ones. It also tends to lag in terms
of features. For instance, it only recently got tethering capabilities,
and multi-core is still unsupported. For developers, C and C++, two of
the most popular programming languages are not supported by the SDK,
which means that iOS or Android applications need to be re-written to
work on Windows Phone. This may explain the lack of apps…
However,
the Windows Marketplace has grown considerably since the Windows Phone
launch, so if the set of applications that is useful to you is
available, chances are that you will have a very good user experience. I
did.
Killer Apps
Despite everything that modern
smartphones do, most smartphone users activity usually revolve around
these activities/apps. And curiously, most apps that people “can't live
without" are in fact text-based.
Keyboard (excellent):
I've said it in pretty much all my smartphone reviews: the Windows
Phone 7 keyboard is the best in terms of responsiveness and ability to
predict which key you're trying to hit with your fingers. If you have
never tried it, I suggest you do – some call it “voodoo”. The Nokia
Lumia 900 takes this to the next-level because the display is bigger.
Typing is a real pleasure, and I would rather do email with the Lumia
900 than any other device – including the Samsung
Galaxy Galaxy Note, only because the Note is slightly “laggy”. Despite
the lack of voice dictation, I'm giving an "excellent" rating to the
keyboard. If you're a text-person, take note.
Facebook (excellent):
First, it is worth noting that the Facebook integration in the Windows
Phone OS itself is simply extraordinary. From the People HUB, it is
possible to post an update (to multiple social networks) and see your
friends' updates. In the photo gallery,
the Facebook albums are accessible and the image loading is even pretty
fast, which makes me wonder if the photos are pulled to a Microsoft server, shrunk down before being sent back to Windows Phone.
To
access the full array of features in Facebook, there's a native app
which has a Windows Phone "look and feel". All the Facebook features
that I normally use are there (updtes, photo uploads, like/comments),
but I don't know if something is missing when compared to iOS and
Android versions.
Skype (in beta): with a front camera, the Lumia 900 is now video-chat capable, and that's great because Skype is now in beta for Windows
Phone. Unfortunately Skype is very much in "beta" state, and doesn't
really work great yet. It is slow, and the contacts can't be filtered by
online/offline. It is also not very stable and overall, it deserves its
“beta” status. Nokia has preloaded Tango, which is a viable alternative
to Skype. It's great, but the only issue is that most people haven't
used it yet. [Windows phone Skype download link]
Email (excellent):
the email support is “top notch” in my opinion. It's true that you
don't have things like the Blackberry shortcuts, but the Exchange Server
support is great, the setup is extremely easy: I basically just had to
enter my email and password. On Android and iOS I have to enter 5 or 6
long strings of information with the server URL, etc...it's so annoying.
The font used in Windows Phone and the ultra-clean design makes emails
very readable. Overall, I love the WP7 email experience. I'll take the
WP7 email experience over iOS or Android any day. Only Blackberry
remains the king of the hill on that one, especially on the Bold 9xxx.
Finally,
Windows Phone actually downloads the message upon receiving the
notification. It's great because many smartphone out there don't
download the message in the background, which means that the download
happens when you open the email app. I can't stand it as that makes me
wait another 4-10 seconds to access my email. Fortunately, this is not
the case here.
Maps (good): the
default mapping application on Windows Phone is Bing Maps. It's pretty
good, but unfortunately, it's not as good as Google Maps, especially
when the Android version has had so many improvements over the past
year. Yet, it should be good enough for most use cases in pedestrian
mode. If you are trying to use it while driving (should you?) things can
be a bit tough because street names aren't as pervasive or readable
than with Google Maps. It would also be nice if this app could cache
maps on the local storage.
Navigation (very good):
Fortunately, for driving around, there is Nokia Drive a true personal
navigation application that is great: For one, the maps are stored
locally on the phone itself, so the phone does not need to download the
maps in real-time, which is great for speed and battery life. The map is
also a bit better in terms of street names readability. The best part
is that it's free - and you can download maps for *almost* every
countries in the world (Japan isn't available, for example).
Web Browsing (good):
The new Windows Phone browser is now using the Internet Explorer 9
(IE9) rendering engine, which is much better than the IE7 engine used
previously. This time, I have not seen any site compatibility issues,
and overall, things work fairly well, but this phone won't break any
performance record in terms of Javascript benchmarking - more on that
topic in the performance section...
Unfortunately, there is no
Flash support, and although Microsoft has declared that it has no
"philosophical issue" with having Flash on its platform, the current
reality is that Flash isn't available. HTML5 is well supported, so you
may try your luck on HTML5 sites, but I usually hear that many smaller
services, especially in Europe, still run video on Flash. Actually,
that's the #1 complaint that I hear about the iPad in Europe. Windows
Phone 7.5 will have the same issue, although as a handset, it seems less
of a problem than it is for a tablet.
Web search (Bing-centric):
it's not a surprise, but the default search engine is Bing (from
Microsoft), and it works reasonably well. If you want, you can install
Google Search as an app, but to be honest, I would have preferred to
have a better integration of Google. Bing is OK, but I find it inferior
to Google Search when it comes to searching for tech stuff in forums
etc…
Imaging / Photography (average)
The iPhone 4S comes out sharper. Check the original photos on our flickr page
The Lumia 900 had a harder time dealing with the strong contrast between the tree and the cloudy sky
In
terms of photography, the competitive landscape is brutal: this is
obviously a feature that a lot of people care about, and that's probably
the #3 item, after the overall design and user experience.
Unfortunately, the Lumia 900 does not take the best photos and videos.
In my tests, I found that the iPhone 4S, or the Samsung Galaxy S2 (or
Galaxy Note) can easily beat the Nokia Lumia 900 in this area.
This
does not mean that the Nokia Lumia 900 is "bad". It's decent, but it
can't compete in terms of photo image quality, there's no question about
it. Fortunately, it's fairly good for web use (social networks, emails,
twitpic…).The video quality pretty much reflect this as well. It's
pretty good, but doesn't handle high contrast as well. Note that during
my tests in relatively difficult lighting, both the Lumia 900 and the
iPhone 4S experienced autofocus difficulties at different moments.
Entertainment (Very good)
Video playback:
the Lumia 900 uses the same hardware as the Lumia 800 and it is
therefore just as capable in terms of multimedia. I have tested the
usual Starcraft and Gran Turismo 5 1080p trailers: both played well and
looked beautiful on the big AMOLED display. Note that I've been only
using .MP4 files and that they were all copied to the phone via the Zune
software. I haven't tried all kinds of file formats, so if there's a
demand for it, I can dig further into it.
Photo Gallery:
I like the photo gallery, it's efficient, and I can sort it by month,
people or albums. It lets me access my online albums as well (I mainly
view Facebook's photos - mines and my friends') and it's relatively
fast, even over 3G. I also love the fact that the background image in
the Pictures HUB is randomly selected from my recent photos. Good stuff!
Music:
obviously, you can import/buy Mp3 files, but each Windows Phone is also
a Zune player, which means that you can also buy videos and subscribe
to an listen music service from Microsoft. I used it for a while, and
it's pretty good. If you want more choices, there is a host of apps that
are available through Marketplace: Rhapsody, Slacker, LastFM, Amazon,
Sirius - just to name the most famous.
Nokia Music:
this app/service is exclusive to Nokia handsets: Nokia music for
Windows Phone was introduced at Nokia World, and it is dead simple:
choose your music style, press play, and it will start streaming music.
Don't like the current song? Skip to the next one.The radio is
completely free, no login required, just tap and listen.
System performance (synthetically slow, perceptibly fast)
Again,
the Lumia 900 will perform exactly like the Lumia 800 (see charts
below). They use the same hardware, so expect the same performance. to
be blunt, the Lumia 900 is not going to impress in any synthetic
benchmark, and it is actually far behind in the carts. The explanation
is twofold. First, Microsoft's Javascript engine is much slower than
Apple's and Google's. That's why it basically loses badly in all the
Javascript benchmarks. That said, Javascript benchmarks unfortunately
represent much of the web experience, even if they are interesting to
look at.
Secondly, the Lumia 900 is not multi-core. This means
that if we were to benchmark raw CPU performance, it would also lose
badly to dual-core, and quad-core systems currently on the market. This
performance would be needed to run physics in games, and faster image
processing, just to give you two examples.
The Lumia 900 and 800 share the same performance characteristics
The Lumia 900 and 800 share the same performance characteristics
Perceived performance (excellent)
Ironically,
the "perceived" performance is excellent. The Lumia 900 is more fluid
than most smartphones on the market, and its user interface is
incredibly responsive. It's actually not easy to put the phone in a
situation where the lack of CPU raw power is a problem. In fact, only
games and select few apps would do that.
The short explanation is
that user-interface fluidity and raw CPU power are completely
unrelated. We've had smooth scrolling since the days where 8-bit
computers ran at 8MHz, and if you look at three of the major mobile
operating systems out there (Android, iOS, Windows Phone), only Android
suffers from user interface jerkiness (especially pre 4.0). iOS and
Windows Phone have been fluid from day one.
Battery Life (good+)
In
terms of battery life, I like to look at the standard depletion rate in
standby mode, when the phone is working at a minimum, just to keep
things up to date. This basically show the maximum battery life possible
with my current settings. with my settings, the Lumia 900 loses about
10% of its battery overnight (8hrs), which I would consider to be
relatively good, and definitely in-line, or slightly better than most
high-end devices. That translates to an effective two days of standby
mode with LTE on – not bad!
From there, things can change
radically depending on one's activity. The AMOLED display should be a
major power draw, followed by the processor. I'll update this section by
posting a 60mn of idling with display ON, a 60mn video test, and maybe a
60mn gaming test. Those two should give you the lower-bound for battery
life. I didn't want to hold the review while we wait for those.
Conclusion (very good)
The
Nokia Lumia 900 is a beautiful 4G LTE Windows Phone. It has a great
design, great ergonomics and thanks to its polycarbonate build, it is
remarkably solid. If you have not used the Windows Phone operating
system, I would encourage you to check it out, and try it in a store if
you can. It is very fast and clear but it's really up to you to decide
if you like the design and the ergonomics.
Windows Phone works
well for what I do (see "context"), and I'm just about sure that it has a
lot of potential for many, but particularly for first-time smartphone
owners. Now, it is clear that Windows Phone is still facing an uphill
battle, and the main thing that you need to look at is whether or not it
has the apps that you need. That is the single most important thing
that you need to figure out. If your needs are simple (email, text, web,
music, videos), this should be easy.
If you find the Windows
Phone software proposition to be compelling, then the Nokia Lumia 900 is
a great smartphone candidate. To make a long story short, the Lumia 900
is simply the best Windows Phone handset on the market, but the fight
with other high-end smartphone is most definitely tough. |
