Gadgetory

everybody it's Michael with pocketnow.com if you haven't noticed AT&T has really turned up the heat and advertising for its two newest non-iphone smartphone heavyweights the HTC One X and the Nokia Lumia 900 now some of my friends are on AT&T and some of them are first-time smartphone purchasers and they want to know what is offered by each one of these which one should they pick now they both offer a really excellent user experience but they each take a very different road to get there so let's dive in or check them out now the first thing people are going to notice the handle will get a feel for is the phone's exterior so let's check those out these phones offer unique designs for their respective platforms the HTC One X is available in white or dark grey with a polycarbonate shell that really really feels amazing in the hand it's quite light at 135 grams it's got a big 4.7 inch LCD display super LCD display at 720p and the design especially on the white one here suggests something retro futuristic almost like a 1950s sci-fi concept of what a portable television would be like the Nokia Lumia 900 also features a polycarbonate shell which also comes in several available colors as you can see the design here is very different with bold Square angles contrasting interestingly with rounded curves depending on what angle you look at the device from it weighs in at 159 grams and when I first took it out of the box that added weight over the One X was apparent that said it's not a heavy feeling phone just substantial the display is a smaller 4.3 inch AMOLED panel with Nokia's clear black technology now it's not HD but it does offer enhanced readability outdoors now it's not until you power on these devices that you really get a feel for just how different these two phones are now the HTC One X on AT&T is running Android Ice Cream Sandwich with Sense 4.0 and the Lumia 900 is running Windows Phone 7.5 the differences between these two platforms have been well covered but even a beginner can easily see the huge aesthetic difference right off the bat Android offers a huge amount of customizability I've got widgets here for time and weather various applications power management custom apps like Evernote Twitter a stock ticker calendar over here etc I have seven different home screens to customize however I want moving into an Android phone is a lot like setting up a computer you can do pretty much anything you want but it takes a long time to get it all configured just right by contrast Windows Phone is pretty Elementary looking at first you have these big tiles that seemed almost toy like in their simplicity but don't make the mistake of conflating simplicity with stupidity this is a very smart OS it's just smart in a very Spartan way Windows Phones debut marketing message was get in get out and get back to life or get on with life and you can see here in Windows Phones notifications scheme that they're trying to do that two new items big blocky number two there another two and my other email account tell you how many emails tweets missed calls etc now a smart phone is something that you're actively using all the time so performance is really really important now I'm not going to talk about chipsets and clock cycles and RAM because in ordinary people don't care about that they just care how it performs how it feels aside from physical appearance this is possibly the most subjective of all categories because everyone values slightly different parts of the user experience for example I prefer fluidity and responsiveness to raw ability and in this respect windows phone is my preferred device even though the hardware under the hood is less capable on paper my day to day user experience is more fluid than it is on the One X which has to contend with the Sense UI running on top of Android weighing it down a bit don't get me wrong this is one of the most usable Android devices I've ever cared and the Lumia isn't immune to the occasional slowdown or system lag but on the whole I do find Windows Phone more responsive as far as browsing both devices performed well of course the Lumia doesn't support flash because it's a Windows Phone but as I use Chrome on the One X that's not an issue for me because it doesn't either load times were comparable on each in more mundane news phone calls on each device were plenty clear and callers said I sounded great reception seemed excellent on each device in my well covered area of Boston and both phones feature LTE for a very fast data connection as well battery life was about the same for each in my testing with a slight edge given to the One X which has excellent battery life especially for an Android phone so if you're the type of person who values simplicity and responsiveness over raw power then the Lumia is probably gonna be the phone for you but what about apps most people know that Windows Phone lags well behind Android when it comes to apps at least as far as raw numbers go but the Lumia 900 isn't just any Windows Phone it's a Nokia Windows Phone that means it carries some special apps designed to fill a few gaps in the market place inside the Nokia collection here there's no Kia Drive to compete with Google navigation on the One X Nokia Maps to augment the Lumias Bing Maps application and Nokia transit which is for those of you who live in cities served by public transportation also and this is not unique to the Lumia instead of hundreds of Twitter and Facebook clients that you jump into individually the Lumia 900 uses Windows Phones me and people hubs to aggregate all your social content so instead of separately hopping into a bunch of separate apps it's all presented in one feed you can get the same experience by downloading any of hundreds of social feed apps on your One X but it's not built right into the OS like it is on Windows Phone and it's rarely presented quite as beautifully as Microsoft does here now these apps are all great on Windows Phone especially at the asking price the Nokia collection which is free for most of these applications but whether they can replace the sheer number of options available on Android is up to you if you're a power user who wants the newest apps right away even though Microsoft is catching up you're definitely still going to want to choose Android but if you're a more typical user with a Facebook account maybe one Twitter account a few emails LinkedIn Foursquare Angry Birds and other common stuff Windows Phone will serve you wonderfully and simply finally our talk about the cameras on each of these devices will be very short briefly the camera on the One X isn't the best but it's pretty good the one on the Lumia is really really not especially when it comes to low light the Lumias 8 megapixel camera is unimpressive colors are washed out with a lot of blue in them a lot of the time there's a lot of noise and the shots especially in low-light once again and considering the carl zeiss lens there's not much to get excited about here while the One X is 8 megapixel shooter might deliver some more saturation than is called for its photos are much better with a warm tone that might put some off but looks a lot better than the Lumias dead blue wash and the camera software with its unified viewfinder and burst mode ability to take stills from video and the 1080p video recording is heads and shoulders above the Lumia which is still a nice viewfinder it's just not really anything new again simple most of that holds true for video as well so they're the top non-iphone smartphones available on AT&T and they're available right now the One X is one $99.99 the Lumia is $99.99 that's both of those obviously on a two-year contract which should you get well obviously if you're a crazy power user gamer tech head junkie you're definitely going to want to go for the One X you already know that more than that though something for you to consider if you're just a normal person is how deeply integrated you are with Google's features their search Gmail Google Calendar Google Voice anything Google related if you're heavily woven into the Google ecosystem you're gonna want to give serious consideration to drop in the extra hundo on the one X on the other hand if you're not all that tied in to Google so you've got hotmail or MSN or Yahoo for your email provider maybe work calendars through exchange you're a Microsoft Office user you've got maybe one Twitter account one Facebook account Windows Phone is a really really viable option and you should consider it the OS is beautiful thanks to Nokia the hardware is now beautiful it's a contender folks especially if you're a first-time smartphone buyer now before you get all up in arms I'm not saying that it should be seated at the kids table I'm not saying it's a toy Windows Phone is a very powerful OS but the starkness of its software and the simplicity it implies is very attractive to all users but especially to first-time smartphone buyers this has been michael fisher with PocketNow drop us a line in the comments let us know which phone you bought or what you thought overall give us a thumbs up if you liked what you saw and we'll see you next time thanks for watching you