Nokia Lumia 900 Review - Windows Phone with LTE
by Brian Klug on April 3, 2012 9:00 PM ESTPerformance
Performance on Windows Phone 7.5 at the moment tops out at almost the same place for virtually every handset. As I touched on before, the platform is still a Qualcomm-only party, and the name of the game is single core 45nm Snapdragon with Adreno 205 at the high end in the form of either MSM8x55, or for the Lumia 900 APQ8055 at 1.4 GHz.
I’ve already penned some thoughts on WP7’s current chassis spec, and in the future the specification will open up with the Tango update (which we’ve seen in the Lumia 610) to a lower-end configuration with MSM7x30 or MSM7x27A. Eventually Windows Phone will move onto dual core SoCs and possibly more vendors, but when and how that happens remains to be seen. The driving factors will undoubtably be both performance, but also improvements to things around the edges like 1080p video encode, decode, and power gains from a 28nm process geometry.
For now however let’s focus on the Lumia 900, which again is 1.4 GHz APQ8055 with 512 MB of LPDDR2. Benchmarking WP7.5 still is a pretty basic thing, since platform consistency somewhat obviates the need for many of the other big cross-platform benchmarks (this will change with Windows 8, however). For now that means our testing is limited primarily to assessing javascript performance with sunspider, browsermark, and WP Bench.
| WPBench Comparison | ||||
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HTC Surround (1.0 GHz QSD8250) |
Nokia Lumia 800 (1.4 GHz MSM8255) |
Nokia Lumia 710 (1.4 GHz MSM8255) |
Nokia Lumia 900 (1.4 GHz APQ8055) |
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| Total Score | 61.58 | 91.14 | 92.85 | 89.09 |
| Result Screenshot |
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At this point all the most modern WP7 devices are still shipping with essentially the same SoC - 1.4 GHz 45nm MSM8x55/APQ8055. For comparison, the initial launch devices were 65nm QSD8x50 at 1 GHz. With the Tango update performance differences will start to be more of a thing for consumers to care about as it becomes possible to select a phone with a lower end SoC that still runs the Windows Phone UI at a decent clip (like the Lumia 610 we’ve handled). As a result, it isn't surprising at all to see the WP7.5 devices with the same exact SoC all clumped together and performing basically the same. In addition, though the WP7.5 IE JavaScript engine (Chakra) is a huge improvement upon the WP7 JScript engine, it still lags behind the competition on Android and iOS.
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Denithor - Tuesday, April 3, 2012 - link
Kinda sucks. You put in three Nokia models? Why not a comparison to other phones US buyers are likely to be considering? I know the specs are available but it makes for a much quicker reference.Brian Klug - Tuesday, April 3, 2012 - link
That's a valid point, and honestly picking the phones for the comparison table is always a bit of a struggle, I just wanted to show how the other Nokia WP7 devices line up in comparison with the flagship. Perhaps another one with Galaxy Nexus GSM/UMTS and iPhone 4S? I mean we've shown those in tables many, many times.-Brian
Operandi - Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - link
Uhh.. yeah I would say so. This is the only WP7 I would ever consider, the others migh as well not exist frankly.abhaxus - Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - link
What he said. This phone is sexy, I'd like to see it's size compared to other sexy handsets. Most WP7 handsets are... plain.niva - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
Performance wise it's not much different from the 710 or the 800, which are both phones worth considering. I think the 800 is better than the 900, but I prefer smaller phones. I think I might just bite the bullet and settle on the 710.geddarkstorm - Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - link
Why is no one mentioning the absolutely abysmal battery life of this phone? It's at the very bottom of the tethering chart for instance. I don't see this phone rising above the lower half of the tests in anything other than 4G. And who really wants a phone with sharp corners and no sense of hand ergonomics?Can't wait for Windows 8, and good hardware.
seanleeforever - Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - link
that and this phone is actually slower than it looks on the chart.great review, but the chart is seriously outdated.
take my HTC sensation for example, i just run the sun spider 0.91 and i get 1935ms and browsermark of 77138 with andriod STOCK browser. my phone does have ICS and ARHD rom, but if you honestly think a mod rom would somehow increase the phone performance by 94% faster (39768 on your chart vs 77138 i get), or by 221% faster(6217.4ms vs 1935 ms), you must be drunk.
this is with ICS stock browser, i think if you updated your chart, you will find windows phone will looks even worse (a lot worse) than it is now.
dtolios - Friday, April 6, 2012 - link
"who really wants a phone with sharp corners and no sense of hand ergonomics?"- It has hard corners - where you DON'T hold the phone from...iPhone 4 series has sharper edges - where you do hold the phone from...If that's not an issue - and marketing wise clearly it's not - then the 900 is fine. Afaik most ppl really like the design, and so do I.
UltraTech79 - Saturday, April 7, 2012 - link
Yeah iPhone 4 has sharp edges, if it weren't for all the rounded edges. And who are you to tell us how to hold a phone? Never played any games on a phone have you?Its badly designed.
Spunjji - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
Who are *you* to tell us how to hold a phone?See how easy that was? Try a better argument. You had a valid point (worse gaming ergonomics) until you made yourself sound like an idiot (opinion as fact, referring to meaningless notions of sales figures).