Tuesday 31 July 2012

Nokia Lumia 900 (Part 3)



Connectivity has plenty of options

The Nokia Lumia 900 has quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support and tri-band 3G with HSPA.
The local connectivity is covered by Wi-Fi b/g/n with DLNA and stereo Bluetooth 2.1. Bluetooth is currently limited as to what it can do - there's no file transfer support, for one.
Syncing with a computer is done with the Zune computer application. It's the only way to transfer files directly between your computer and your Windows Phone - there's no Mass storage mode.
You can sync files with Zune over the USB cable and Wi-Fi. There's a Mac version of it available too - Windows Phone 7 Connector.
Additional SD storage isn't available on Windows Phone so the Lumia 900 doesn't offer such an option.
Another syncing option is the cloud. SkyDrive is a free Microsoft service that gives you 25GB of cloud storage. You can even have your photos automatically uploaded as soon as you snap them.
Mango brings Wi-Fi hotspot functionality too. All you need is an active SIM card with a data connection and you're all set.

Internet Explorer mobile is easy to use, limited by the hardware

The Internet Explorer on Widows Phone was updated to the latest version for the 7.5 update and it improves the user interface.
The URL bar is always visible (but the status bar at the top of the screen is auto-hides, so you don't actually lose any screen real estate) and next to it is the refresh button. You can, of course, bring up the extended settings, which offer a great deal of options.
The URL bar also serves as a search bar, which is a handy shortcut for looking things up if you're not sure which site exactly will do the job.
The browser interface is quite minimalist - you have only the URL bar at the bottom with a reload icon to the left. Swiping the bar upward reveals shortcuts for tabs, recent, favorites, add to favorites, share page, pin to start and settings. The settings menu offers the usual options like location, allow cookies, delete browsing history but it does offer a very neat option to choose a global preference for mobile or desktop site versions.
Nokia Lumia 900 Nokia Lumia 900 Nokia Lumia 900
Internet explorer mobile
The browser makes the controls in web pages look just like their equivalents in native apps. So, a web app can look just like a native app with practically no extra effort from the designer.
The six tab ceiling hasn't been lifted - it's not too bad, but competing OSes don't have such limitations. We were also hoping to see text reflow, but no luck on that either.
Nokia Lumia 900 Nokia Lumia 900
In-browser options • Tabs
The Nokia Lumia 900 browser is certainly a capable performer, and uses hardware graphics acceleration to provide smoother graphics and animations. Still, for all the optimizations, it can't quite make up for the lack of raw processing power as confirmed by our benchmarks.

SunSpider

Lower is better
  • Samsung Galaxy S III1447
  • HTC One S1708
  • HTC One X (Tegra 3)1757
  • HTC One X (Snapdragon S4)1834
  • LG Optimus 4X1845
  • Samsung Galaxy S II1849
  • Samsung Galaxy Nexus1863
  • Samsung Galaxy Note 10.11891
  • Apple iPhone 4S2217
  • Sony Xperia S2587
  • HTC Sensation XE4404
  • Nokia Lumia 9006813

BrowserMark

Higher is better
  • Samsung Galaxy S III169811
  • LG Optimus 4X134036
  • Samsung Galaxy S II111853
  • Samsung Galaxy Nexus103591
  • HTC One S98435
  • HTC One X (Tegra 3)96803
  • HTC One X (Snapdragon S4)92232
  • Apple iPhone 4S88725
  • Sony Xperia S74990
  • HTC Sensation XE72498
  • Nokia Lumia 90032706
There is no Flash or Silverlight support on the Lumia 900, but that was to be expected. Plus, Android is about to lose its Flash capabilities once Jelly Bean updates start coming so this should no longer be considered a major disadvantage.

Bing search on Windows Phone

When you search on Bing, one of the things that might be offered as a relevant result is an app from the Marketplace. For example, searching for "travel" will offer a travel tool app. This feature is called App connect.
Bing also grew two new search modes - song recognition and barcode scanner. Those are features popular with apps, but with WP7.5 you get those natively as part of the OS.
The camera scanner can also snap a photo of text, perform OCR and translate it into another language.
Of course, Bing does regular web searches for pages or images and can look for interesting locations nearby.
Nokia Lumia 900 Nokia Lumia 900 Nokia Lumia 900 Nokia Lumia 900
The Bing search app

Marketplace just now catching up

The Windows Phone Marketplace is playing catch up with the Apple Appstore and the Android Market. As of April 2012, it hosts north of 90 thousand apps available. It's organized into four main sections - applications, games, music and the HTC apps store. A fifth section called Updates shows up when one of your installed apps has received an update - there's an Update all button, which will save you the hassle of updating each app individually.
Anyway, each app will be listed with a short description, a rating and user reviews, and a few screenshots. If the app can use something that can potentially breach your privacy (e.g. location information) the Marketplace will let you know.
It's not as comprehensive as the Android Market (which lists just about everything the app can use) but on the upside it only warns you about the important things.
Big downloads (anything north of 40MB) need a Wi-Fi connection to work. Alternatively, you can download those jumbo apps using the desktop Zune software.
Nokia Lumia 900 Nokia Lumia 900 Nokia Lumia 900 Nokia Lumia 900
Marketplace
The Application section starts with a featured app, then it's on to the categories (including all and free), followed by the top apps, a list of new ones and a longer list of featured apps.
The Music section is actually the Zune Marketplace. Its structure is similar to the Application section. First, a featured artist of the week, three more featured artists, then a list of new releases, top albums and genres.
Nokia Lumia 900 Nokia Lumia 900 Nokia Lumia 900 Nokia Lumia 900
The Zune music store
Genres themselves are separated into sections too - new releases and top artists/albums/songs/playlists. For each song, you get a 30 second preview (same as iTunes). If you have a Zune pass, you can stream the entire song, just like you would on a Zune player (it's 10 US dollars a month).
An app preloaded by Nokia is App Highlights - it gives you an assortment of apps into several categories to give you a start. The first category is actually called Starter kit - a list of what are considered vital apps (e.g. YouTube, Netflix, etc.), then there's Addictive (games go here), Health+ and Foodies have apps to keep fit and to gorge yourself respectively.
The app is accelerometer-enabled and can reshuffle the lists of applications every time you shake the phone, which is a fun way to find new apps. Also, the tile for the app would occasionally change to advertise some of the apps it recommends to get your attention.
Nokia Lumia 900 Nokia Lumia 900 Nokia Lumia 900 Nokia Lumia 900
App Highlights
The Games section is divided into Xbox Live, New, Featured and Genres, which is the categories version. A great thing about games in the Windows Phone Marketplace is the try option, which is available to many games and apps. It gives you a trial of a game before you decide to buy it.
The new and featured sections act as a what's new/hot reference.
Nokia Lumia 900 Nokia Lumia 900 Nokia Lumia 900 Nokia Lumia 900
Exploring the games section
The Marketplace on Windows Phone can be accessed via your WP device, the Zune software on your PC and the windowsphone.com website.
Search is available for the Marketplace but right now it pulls together search results from all sections - games and apps alike. Microsoft have fixed the issue where songs would get mixed up in the search too, which was annoying.

Xbox LIVE gaming

Xbox Live is at the heart of the Games hub. It carries over many features from the Xbox - from your avatar to your scores and achievements. The Spotlight feature is available too (it shows info on new stuff) and also Requests - which shows you game invites from your friends.
Nokia Lumia 900 Nokia Lumia 900 Nokia Lumia 900
Xbox LIVE tile
Anyway, the games themselves are housed in the Collection section. Nothing much to see here, the installed games are arranged in a square grid and there's a Get more games shortcut, which launches the Marketplace.
Not all games support Xbox Live - the ones that do are in the corresponding section in the Marketplace. We did test games like Need for Speed, Kinectimals, Angry birds and had no problems with the Nokia Lumia 900, the 1.4GHz processor and Adreno 205 GPU were more than adequate in handling more complex graphics.

Bing Maps lights your path

The basic mapping solution in Windows Phone is Bing Maps. They have driving (and pedestrian) navigation for free, but they're not a match for Nokia's bespoke applications (we'll discuss them in the next section).
Nokia Lumia 900 Nokia Lumia 900 Nokia Lumia 900
Bing Maps
Now, it's not quite voice-guided navigation. Here's how it works: first you set up a route and listen to the first instruction, then when it's time for the next instruction, the phone will beep and highlight it. If you tap it, the phone will read it out to you, but only then.
The Maps app uses a big font with white letters on black background that make reading easy. It still requires you to take your eyes off the road though, it won't put SatNav apps out of business.
Real-time traffic information is also available.
That's not all the new Maps can do for you though. The app will locate nearby points of interest with the new feature called Local Scout and it will even show you indoor maps of malls.
Local Scout has a tabbed interface to sort the various points of interest - eat+drink, see+do, shop and highlights. You can pick items from a "I care about" list to get the relevant options only.
Nokia Lumia 900 Nokia Lumia 900 Nokia Lumia 900
Nokia Lumia 900 Nokia Lumia 900 Nokia Lumia 900
Local scout can take you to interesting places
A cool functionality of Local scout is you can pin places to your homescreen. So let's say you like a pub and like to check it out from time to time, read reviews, call for a reservation - it's right there on your homescreen - that's neat.
Nokia Lumia 900
Pin a location to the homescreen

Nokia Maps and Nokia Drive

The Nokia Lumia 900 managed to get a GPS lock quickly (about a minute) and you can make that even faster if you have a data connection for the A-GPS. Wi-Fi and Cell-ID positioning is also available if you only need a rough position.
Nokia Maps wasn't preinstalled on our unit - there was an app that showed screenshots of Maps plus a link to the Marketplace to get it. It's a simple operation and once you're done, you can start using Nokia Maps.
It's an alternative to Microsoft's Bing Maps. It lets you view maps in three different modes - map, satellite and public transport. You can use pinch zoom to navigate the map (you can also enable old-school zoom controls) and panning around is fast and smooth. Nokia Maps does only 2D mode - there's no 3D option like Google Maps has for example.
It pulls its maps from the Internet, so you'll need an Internet connection to use it.
Nokia Lumia 900 Nokia Lumia 900
Nokia Maps is an alternative to Bing Maps
Moving on to the more interesting part of the duo - Nokia Drive. Unlike Maps, Nokia Drive lets you easily download maps for offline usage for any country in the world - free of charge, of course. Bigger countries are split into pieces, if you don't want to waste your internal memory with maps you'll never use.
Maps aren't that big though - the map for the whole US is 1.9GB, while the map for the whole UK, for example, is 274MB. The 16GB built-in memory is more than enough for any trip you're likely to take. It's easy to delete unneeded maps or download new ones on the go wherever there is Wi-Fi.
Drive does support a 3D view, unlike Maps. It also has 3D landmarks for some of the bigger world cities. You can also use 2D mode if that's what you prefer, but in 3D you get to see further down the road than in 2D.
Other than 2D/3D, settings are pretty scarce - you can toggle daylight and night color schemes, choose whether landmarks should be displayed and choose a voice for the navigation. Many voices in a big number of languages are available for free download.
Nokia Lumia 900 Nokia Lumia 900
Nokia Drive settings
We were hoping for options to fine-tune the routing algorithm - like avoid toll roads, find fastest or shortest route and so on - but there were none to be had. You just set your destination (with an option to review the planned route before you go), hit start and you're off.
While navigating, you can zoom in and out depending on your preference to see more of the road ahead or more details. At the top of the screen is an instruction for the next turn in big, easy to read white on blue letters and a big icon noting the turn. At the bottom of the screen you have readings for how much you have to travel before reaching your destination and also you're current speed. Those get pushed to the left side of the screen in portrait mode.
Nokia Lumia 900 Nokia Lumia 900 Nokia Lumia 900
Navigating with Nokia Drive
We like Nokia Drive's no-distraction's approach to navigation, but we are used to having more control over how the route is chosen. A few other options would have been welcomed too (the Symbian version of Nokia's SatNav solution is very feature-rich).
Still, with the Nokia Lumia 900 you get what no other Windows Phone handset on the market currently offers. The free voice-guided navigation might be just what it takes to convince people to go for the Lumia 900, instead of competing WP phones - at least in that price range.




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