The Nokia Lumia 900 review

The Nokia Lumia 900 has the weight of two technology behemoths and Windows Phone fans on its polycarbonate shoulders. Ars sees if the flagship smartphone can do them all proud.

<a href='http://meincmagazine.com/gadgets/reviews/2012/04/the-nokia-lumia-900-review.ars'>Read the whole story</a>

 

[Eldorito]

"But all parties are pretty mum on the issue of Windows 8."

No, Microsoft has not clearly said that Windows 8 will be available for Win 7.5 phones...that is a big issue, they have hinted that it won't, and anyone who understands the difference between the Win CE kernel and the NT one will say it probably won't happen.

Does the fact the phone is most likely a dead end matter to the readers of this review? I would say heck ya.

Count me in too. I was originally interested in this phone, but all the scuttlebutt I've been reading points to the Lumia being a dead-end device. None of the current lineup will probably see a Windows Phone 8 upgrade. Apparently WP8 brings a kernel change; a total top to bottom re-do of the OS that isn't based on Windows CE, as WP7 is.

And I have a free upgrade on AT&T; I don't want to waste it on a possibly dead end device. Other stuff is waiting in the wings, like the Samsung GSIII this Summer and the iPhone 5.

But the irony is, that if *this* device isn't a huge sales success for them, Nokia and Microsoft won't have the public's attention when they try again later this year/early next year.

Personally, I think the fate of WP7 is one it will share with WebOS; nice, but too little, too late.

WP7 has the advantage that HP won't take it out the back and shoot it

It's a little hard to call on the WP8 thing, Microsoft have stated the obvious, they haven't even announced the release date yet, why would they say which devices would upgrade and which won't? They also talked about how updates work on limited hardware and that claiming any phone would get WP8 would probably be blatantly false, it'll get a stripped down version in many cases. It's the problem of having a different structure to Google and Apple, when they announce a new version of the OS they also announce what phones will be updated. Microsoft announced Apollo more than a year out, it's unlikely it's even closed to finished yet. Apple limit what each device can do and Google just stays really quiet on it but generally have provided a pretty crappy level of service (even on the big Android phones, the Galaxy S made it from 2.1 to 2.3. 4.0 came out 16 months after the G S was released but it still didn't get 4.0)

My guess is that it'll run on some phones and not port data over well. WP8 is meant to have much broader hardware support than WP7 so it seems unlikely there'd be any compatibility issues, but that some phones simply won't have sold well enough for the specific vendors and phone companies to other pushing it, so saying "x phone will get it" won't actually be up to Microsoft. I have an LG Quantum, one with a physical keyboard that already has issues, I can't see it getting an update. Lumia 900? If they didn't update it in some manner it'd hurt Microsoft, make it look like another Android, so Microsoft and Nokia will push that through.