From 2 Struggling Giants, One Beautiful Phone - New York Times

What’s better than a good story about an underdog? A story about two of them.

First, Nokia. Nokia has been pummeled by bad news. Sales of its phones have dried up worldwide. It has been forced to lay off thousands of workers, its stock has fallen sharply and its phones dropped in popularity among Americans, from “very low” to “Nokia who?”

Second, Microsoft. Its effort to compete with the iPhone and Android software is called Windows Phone 7. It’s beautiful, fast and good software. But it came late to the app phone party â€" so late, the band was already packing up. Today, in a room of 100 phones, you could count the number running Windows Phone 7 with one finger.

And so it came to pass that these two struggling giants decided to join forces. They would merge their expertise. They would share technology. They would give the American market one last big and desperate shot, spending hundreds of millions of dollars â€" the biggest marketing campaign ever for Nokia.

On Sunday, Nokia’s do-or-die phone finally arrives.

It’s the Lumia 900. It’s beautiful, fast and powerful, and it’s only $100 (with a two-year AT&T contract). That’s half the price of an iPhone or a comparable Android phone â€" but you’re still getting a top-of-the-line machine.

Its design is striking and unusual. The back and sides are molded from a single piece of hard, grippable plastic, in your choice of black, white or blue. (Nokia hopes that when you read “plastic,” you won’t think “cheap and crude”â€" you’ll think “tough” and “terrific antenna signal.”) The edges are comfortably rounded and entirely uninterrupted by seams, flaps or screws.

The screen is bright, vivid and with little glare, although finger oil frequently builds up. It’s a bigger screen than the iPhone’s: 4.3 inches diagonal. The Lumia 900 feels gigantic if you’re accustomed to an iPhone â€" but the big screen is handy when you’re reading maps, e-books and Web pages.

Then again, the Lumia actually shows you a larger area, but in less detail. Its resolution is 800 by 480. The iPhone’s 3.5-incher has 960 by 640 pixels, so Apple’s screen is far sharper.

The rest of the Lumia specifications are what you’d expect of a top-of-the-line app phone: 8-megapixel camera, with flash, on the back, 1-megapixel camera on the front; GPS, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth; overseas roaming; 14 gigabytes of available storage. Some of the iPhone-like downsides are here, too: nonremovable battery, no memory card, an inability to play Flash videos online.

But the iPhone doesn’t yet use 4G LTE â€" and the Lumia 900 does. That means brisk Internet connections in 4G cities (of which AT&T has many), and incredibly fast speeds in LTE cities (of which AT&T has only 31 so far). Apps download fast, Web sites load fast, videos don’t pause to load.

As usual, the price you pay is battery life: this phone might not make it through the day if you’re online a lot in a 4G city.

The right side has all four physical buttons: volume (up and down), sleep/wake, camera. The earbud cord is the antenna for the built-in FM radio. Call audio quality is excellent.

The software (Windows Phone 7.5, the latest and most polished version) is spectacular. It’s Microsoft’s own invention, a crisply scrolling virtual canvas of information. It’s sharp looking, responsive and loaded with thoughtful touches. For example, even if the phone is off, you can hold down the dedicated camera button and the phone wakes directly into Camera mode, ready to shoot.

The Bing Maps app gives you spoken driving directions. Android phones have more map features, like walking directions and street-view photos. But Bing Maps covers the basics extremely well. When you scroll the map quickly, city names zoom up in size so you know where you are as you pass by â€" a great feature.