Nokia Lumia 900 Wins The Best Smartphone Award For 2012 CES

It was good news for both Nokia and Microsoft as the Lumia 900, powered by Windows Phone, was named the best smartphone at CES 2012.

Nokia and Microsoft have worked on the existing issues of 800 and that's why they have a better battery for the 900. They also have a front facing cam which is going to attract a lot of people who like using it for video calls. I think 900 is going to be a great phone like the 800. Considering that Windows Phone 7.5 is a considerably new mobile OS, a count of 50,000 apps is not a bad count.

Nokia's new Windows Phone flagship was unveiled at CES and we got to spend some quality time with it. The Nokia Lumia 900 builds on the 800's innovative design and offers improved specs (like the 4.3" ClearBlack AMOLED display) along with some new features.

The first thing you'll notice about the new phone is the bigger screen. It has grown in size to 4.3", quite a jump from the 3.7" screen of the Lumia 800. The Lumia 900's body is bigger too, but the bezels have shrunk to partially make up for the increased screen size, so the actual difference in size isn't as big as you would expect.

Some other Microsoft Windows-related products got named for CES 2012 awards. The People's Choice winner, voted on by CNet readers, went to Razer's Project Fiona gaming PC tablet. The award for Best PC of CES 2012 went to HP's impressive looking Ultrabook-style notebook the Envy 14 Spectre. The best software award went to Bluestack's Android app player for Windows 8.

The Nokia Lumia 900 supports LTE connectivity for AT&T's growing 4G network, which allows for blazing fast data of up to 50Mbps downlink and 25Mbps uplink. HSPA+ support is available too with download speeds of 21Mbps and 5.76Mbps for uploads in areas without LTE coverage.

The camera has familiar specs - 8MP stills, wide-angle lens (28mm), F2.2 aperture and 720p videos. Unlike the 800, the Lumia 900 has a video call camera too, a 1MP unit no less.

An agreement with Electronic Arts brings 20 hot games to the Windows Phone Marketplace and it's Nokia's Lumia range that will get them first. Of course, with the 900 you'll be getting those free Nokia Drive voice-guided navigation and Nokia Maps applications too.

    

Lumia 900 uses the same polycarbonate unibody as the N9 and the Lumia 800. It will be available in Black and Cyan, by the way.

The Lumia 900 has grown bigger to accommodate the 4.3" ClearBlack display, but the bezel around it has shrunk so the smartphone still feels reasonably sized.

The curvy body makes the handling of the Lumia 900 even easier. The phone has put on some weight though (it now weighs 160g, up from 142g) and while you can feel the difference, it's not too heavy.

It has a 480x800 pixel resolution and uses a conventional RGB matrix with 3 subpixels to the pixel, which would be a major plus.

The pixel density here is 217ppi, which is equal to that of the Samsung Focus S I937 (another WP phone) and the Samsung I9100 Galaxy S II. We didn't hear anyone complain about those two, so this kind of density should do well on the Lumia 900, too.

The display offers the deep blacks and vibrant colors typical of AMOLEDs and Nokia's ClearBlack technology keeps reflections off the screen to a minimum.

The screen is covered by scratch-resistant Gorilla glass and has the trademark beveled edges.

The camera is the same 8MP unit with a 28mm wide-angle Carl Zeiss lens, which boasts an F2.2 aperture to let more light in. The camera on the front is a 1MP unit with a F2.4 aperture, wide-angle lens and can do 30fps videos. The Lumia 900 will come with the Tango Video Calls app preloaded.

The non-removable battery saw an increase in capacity too - it now stands at 1830mAh. Nokia is promising you'll get over 12 days of standby out of it (on both 2G and 3G) and talk time is 7 hours (again, both 2G and 3G).

One last bit of info, the phone is powered by a Qualcomm APQ8055 chipset (single 1.4GHz Scorpion core, Adreno 205 GPU) paired with 512MB RAM, so we expect the same zippy performance we got with the Lumia 800, but no major speedups. Internal storage is set to 16GB again and there are no other options here.

OK, Nokia Lumia 900 Has won several CES awards. And here is the list of those:

• CNet's "Best of CES" smartphone.
• Popular Mechanics editor's choice award for CES.
• Popular Science "Product of the Future".
• LAPTOP magazine's "Best of CES" finalists.

Microsoft seems to have a wide range of screen sizes, they are pro homebrew, and customizable as a result. May consider these when i upgrade next!