Name: Nokia Lumia 900
What it is: a 1.4 GHz processor, 4G LTE Windows Phone 7.5 device with a 4.3-inch AMOLED ClearBlack glass touch screen. The phone has an 8-megapixel main camera with Carl Zeiss optics and a 1 MP front-facing camera. Bing, Internet Explorer 9 with support for HTML5 come preloaded on the phone. Available apps include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and free Nokia apps including Drive and Camera Extras.
The good: As an iPhone junkie, the Nokia Lumia made me realize that there are other great phones to consider. I love the large screen, and the camera is fantastic for travel photos, especially with its panoramic feature that I find offers better guidance than the panoramic camera feature on iOS 6. Nokia’s Camera Extras alone make this phone worth serious consideration because the extras give you SLR-like abilities so you can adjust the ISO, white balance and metering. You can also shoot images in black and white or sepia and can solarize an image for a psychedelic look. Call quality and browser speed are comparable to my iPhone 4S, but battery life is far superior. Although I always have to recharge my iPhone 4S at least once during the day, the Nokia Lumia battery lasted all day. One factor in the superior battery life may be that when you exit Windows apps, they turn off and aren’t running invisibly in the background as apps do in iOS.
The bad: Sometimes an image appears in focus on the Lumia 900, but when I download it to my computer, it actually is fuzzy and not as focused. The phone is slightly wider and longer than my iPhone. Music seems slightly tinny over the speaker phone.
Cost: $49.99 (two-year contract with AT&T) or $799.99 without a plan
Available from: AT&T and amazon.com
