Pocket-Lint have reviewed the European version of the Nokia Lumia 900 and seem pretty happy with the handset.

They note the phone is not just a larger version of the Lumia 800, but has an identity all of its own.

They did feel the handset was a bit bigger than it needed to be, but was very happy with the battery life, saying it would easily last 15 hours through a busy day of  “GPS (on a run for 30 minutes), checking notifications, receiving mail, watching Netflix, playing games, using Spotify, making phone calls, taking pictures and everything else you would expect”, finding it a great leap over the Lumia 800.

Of course the 1.4 Ghz processor had more than enough power for Windows Phone 7.5, and they found with the help of cloud services like SkyDrive, Dropbox, Nokia Music, Spotify and Netflix  the 16 GB storage was more than sufficient.

They found Nokia’s collection of app “impressive”,  provided great value for free, including gems like “Nokia Drive, a very good turn by turn navigation app; Nokia Music, a fantastic free streaming music service that lets you create radio stations or play curated music around certain themes; Nokia Transport, an app that lets you check transport routes and times around the UK and the rest of the world; Nokia Maps, a quicker and easier alternative to WP7′s own mapping software; Creative Studio, an app that adds panorama, burst shooting and creative effects to the camera;  Tango for video calling; and a few others.“

The phone also included internet sharing without needing to be provisioned by the carrier first.

They found the camera reasonably good but not outstanding, writing “Our test shots were on the whole good, but we still got mixed results. Basically the more light you have the better the shots. Inside and the flash can be overbearing if your subject is too close, and without the flash the pictures can be noisy. Get the right lighting and the results are very good indeed.”

They concluded:

So, should you get the Nokia Lumia 900? We are torn between this and the Lumia 800 enjoying both phones as much as each other.

The Lumia 900 delivers a bigger screen, a front facing camera, faster surfing speeds, internet tethering, a much better battery, and a easier to charge device than the 800. However all those extras come at the cost of a much bigger device that won’t be for everyone. Like the Samsung Galaxy S III, Sony Xperia S, and HTC One X, the Lumia 900 is a big phone and that is likely to put some off.

If you fancy the idea of a bigger screen this is the better of the two. It’s more brash that the Lumia 800, but the experience is good. The screen’s resolution is stretched to its limit at this size, but that’s not enough to push it over the edge as in the Titan series from HTC.

We aren’t going to witter on about the merits of Windows Phone 7 over and over again. You either like the OS or you don’t.

Nokia has done the best it can to make the most of Windows Phone 7, for us making this a viable alternative to Android and the iPhone. The app scene is still lacking though. It is getting better, but if that’s your main want, WP7 still won’t deliver as much as the other two main platforms. For us, the success with WP7 is with contacts, the interactive tiles, and how easy everything is to use. The apps will come in time.

We like it, but we know many won’t.

They awarded the handset 4.5/5 stars.  Read their full review here.

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