Reviewers Overwhelmingly Like The Nokia Lumia 900, Consumers Will Too

Some of the reviews online certainly aren't flattering ("mediocre hardware" - Tech Republic, for example). But that's not the real problem. After all, if you want an iPhone or Android phone, you probably already have one. If you really find Windows Phone better for you, the Nokia 900 is a sound choice.

The big problem is the future. It's easy to say that Windows 7 Phone isn't as "heavy" as the other options. But iOS and Android didn't start out as large are they are, either. They've had years to evolve AND improve. As well, most of the Windows Phone apps are stripped down, compared to their iOS and/or Android equivalents. This makes them run faster in some cases, uses less memory for certain, but it may well be those more CPU-bound, extra features that make the difference for a given user.

And the 900's GPU doesn't even match the power of the iPhone 3GS... it's very weird for the Windows Phone flagship to not support games in a 2012-class fashion. Particularly given that this is a pure consumer push, and that Apple's primary upgrades for the iPhone 4/4S and iPad 2/3 have been better chops in gaming... which has made iOS the top mobile gaming platform, despite Sony and Nintendo's best efforts.

And here's the other thing: upgrades. Microsoft threw all their business customers under the bus, not supporting any sort of upgrade for Windows Mobile... and if you think that doesn't matter, consider than WinMo outsold WinPhone by more than 2:1 in 2011. These are current customers. So MS has to upgrade all the Win7Phone folks to Win8Phone... which is supposed to just be the ARM version of Windows 8... Microsoft's one-size-fits-all future. This is going to support multiprocessing just dandy (one current development target for the ARM version of Windows 8 is the 4+1 core nVidia Tegra 3), but it's also going to be a much heavier footprint, more complete OS than Win7Phone. And since there really is no functional difference between "smartphone" and "tablet" (eg, it's just a marketing designation), it's hard to imagine the "phone" version being all that different from the tablet. And apps will run on tablet, phone, and desktop, or that's the claim. That OS ships in 5-6 months by most accounts... and these models are going to be a problem for Microsoft and the users then. They're either not getting the upgrade, or they're going to be overpowered by it.

And that's needless...there are a wide variety of much higher-end Android devices shipping at the $100 and below mark. At least half a dozen with qHD screens and dual core processors. Yeah, competition helps on price, but that doesn't mean Windows Phone is immune to price competition. Today, buying a new Android phone, you may have to question if you get an update to ICS (because it's up to the weird matrix of your carrier and your HW company), but all the devices will run it fine. And people complain about Android's update cycle. Microsoft MUST do better than that -- that's one advantage they have with their tighter control of HW and SW. If not, they're going to be seen as the worst of both worlds (eg, Android and iOS).

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