Nokia Lumia 900 (cyan blue, AT&T)

Pros: AMOLED display one of the best ever
LTE speeds - 20Mbps down 7Mbps up
Distinct premium design
25GB cloud storage
Elegant & speedy OS
Nokia Drive offline/online GPS nav
Voice search & voice launch apps
Zune Pass/Xbox/MS Office
2-day battery life

Cons: Power button placement
Can't change volume when screen is off
Only 85,000-100,000 apps at launch
Needs a notifications section
No expandable memory
Some older games lack fast resume

Summary: You cannot find a better deal than the Nokia Lumia 900. I've never owned a Nokia before but after getting my Lumia 900 I might be a customer for life. This phone is made of a material I have never seen or felt before. It feels very solid, smooth and high quality. The cyan color is absolutely beautiful and is definitely the color to get as it really stands out as a special phone. Everything else just looks plain and boring next to this phone.

The ClearBlack AMOLED display is absolutely gorgeous and blows away any washed out LCD like the iPhone's. Colors are much more vibrant and images appear to float on the top of the screen like an actual photograph. Blacks are so dark and inky that you can't even tell where the screen meets the bezel. There are videos online comparing the iPhone vs. Lumia 900 and there is no contest; Lumia's display is much better looking and much bigger.

The signal strength is amazing and calls sound much better than any phone I've had. Visual voicemail is included with this phone for free and it works extremely well. 4G LTE speeds are blazing fast in NYC. You can get downloads in the range of 20Mbps on this phone. That is faster than most people's home broadband connection. Internet connection sharing with up to 5 other devices is available on some data plans as well. The external speaker on the phone has great volume and since it is on the bottom instead of the back it doesn't get muffled when you put the phone down on a surface or hold it in your hand. Outstanding design Nokia!

The camera is very good and can be brought up even when the phone is locked just by holding down the dedicated camera button. You can snap photos in widescreen or fullscreen mode and upload directly to Facebook Twitter or Skydrive without having to open another app. Worth mentioning you also get 25GB of free cloud storage with SkyDrive. Very nice!

So far battery life has been incredible by smartphone standards. After using my phone all day yesterday to look at apps, browse the web, take photos, listen to music, etc. I had almost 50% battery left by the end of the day. This phone can last you a day and a half easily on a single charge.

AT&T includes some nice apps like U-verse video streaming and MyWireless to check your data usage change your plan or pay your bills. You also get a ton of exclusive apps like Nokia's turn by turn navigation and public transit apps. Nokia owns Navteq the mapping company which provides map data for tons of companies like Garmin so this is a major addition to the value of the phone. There are also exclusive CNN, ESPN, Univision, and college sports applications on Nokia's Lumia phones. These apps are excellent and all have 4 or 5 star ratings from users. There are also a few dozen exclusive apps coming from Electronic Arts for the Lumia phones. I love earning Xbox Live achievements on the go. You can even see your friends avatars and edit your Xbox Live avatar on this phone!

There are a ton of great apps on Windows Phone so I'll just highlight a few of my favorites: YouTube Pro lets you download and upload videos to Youtube right from a tile on your start screen. It can play videos in HD as well and you can pin any Youtube channel you subscribe to on the start screen. The pinned live tile will update with the image of any new video that is uploaded to that Youtube channel. Radio Controlled is a Pandora music app that plays all of your Pandora playlists. Gmaps Pro gives you Google Maps on your phone including Google Latitude to track your friends and family. "Hey DJ" lets you use your voice to load songs, artists and playlists. Windows Phone also comes with great apps like voice search and voice to launch any app just by holding down the Windows button and saying "Start Netflix" or "Open Netflix." Fastest way to launch apps in my opinion. You can also search for weather by saying "weather" or find movie show times nearby just by saying "movies." This is Siri without the fluff and back-talk, it just works and it works fast.

Most of the popular apps are available as well from Kindle/Audible to USA Today/Fox News to Skype/Tango to Kik/WhatsApp to iHeartRadio/TuneIn to Netflix/Vevo to ESPN/MLB at Bat to GasBuddy/Yelp to eBay/Amazon to Twitter/Facebook to Shazam/SoundHound to WeatherChannel/Accuweather to Spotify/Rdio to Slacker/Last.FM to Flixster/Fandango to Bible/Dictionary to Glympse/IMDB you get the idea. This phone has apps, don't believe anyone who says otherwise. By the end of May the Windows Phone platform will have over 100,000 apps in total.

My complaints about the phone are minor, but I wish that they had spaced out the hardware buttons more on the side. The volume rocker should have been higher and the camera button a little bit lower. Sometimes it is a bit hard to find the power button in the middle; a little raised bump like those on your keyboard would have helped. I also would have liked an SD card slot to expand memory. Apps are usually less than 1MB, but if you have a lot of videos or a ton of songs you are going to need to compress them to fit on the 16GB of storage. Fortunately Zune PC software does an excellent job of handling this behind the scenes, you can even tell the software the exact bitrate you want it to make all of your songs and it will only compress them on the device, not your PC. Finally not all games have been updated yet to support fast app switching (hold down the back arrow to bring up the task switcher), this is changing over time though as each developer updates their games. All new games seem to support the fast app switching as well.

Given the insanely low price of this phone, the rare exceptional quality of the hardware, the blazing LTE speeds, and the high quality of the Windows Phone platform you would be crazy to pass up this phone. Nokia has truly made something special here in the Lumia 900.