Here is a quick review of the new Nokia Lumia 900 (Windows Phone) that I picked up.

I went in to Rogers and walked out with the phone 15min later. It was quick and simple. Phone was $150 on hardware upgrade and you get $50 mail in rebate. Nokia is also give users who buy the phone a $100 credit if you buy it prior to April 21. This means I got the phone for $35 (admin fee).

Rogers only has the Black model available at this time. But I was able to pick up the light blue rubber sleeve. With the sleeve on, the device still looks sexy and the sleeve is barely noticeable.

The Lumia 900, like the Lumia 800 before it, comes in a unibody polycarbonate form factor that offers a terrific hand feel. Here is something that is amusing…

“While Apple champions unibody designs for its laptops, it obliterates that superiority in its mobile devices. Where the iPhone is a mess of small, fragile parts—glass front and, unnecessarily, back pieces that beg to be encased in thick covers, and several thin, foil-like metal bumper bits—the 900 is a single, well-made, block of polycarbonate. It’s bulletproof, solid. Not frail. But because of its unibody design, and non-replaceable battery, the 900 isn’t going to come apart when dropped either.”

Other nice features are Visual voice mail, Internet sharing (tethering) and support for LTE cellular networks. I’ve really noticed the speed improvement on 4G/LTE compared to 3G.

The cameras are sweet. You have the option for Widescreen picture taking (16:9) and there is also the front facing camera for video calls (Skype and Tango), and then there is the 8MP rear camera. Although not as good as the iPhone 4S camera, it comes close to it.

They also improved the capacitive front buttons—Back, Start, and Search. They are far less easy to trigger accidentally, a long-lived problem on Samsung’s Windows Phone handsets.

I’m also really impressed with the Nokia apps (only available on Nokia phones)…

• Nokia Drive (Turn by turn GPS)
• Nokia Maps
• Nokia Transit

I have not tried the internet sharing yet…but that will be really nice to have when you’re in the middle of nowhere without Wi-Fi and want to get online from a laptop.

Getting setup on the device was quick and painless. All I did was login using my Windows Live ID (email address) and it was configured…all my email was synced, my contacts, my calendar, my tasks, my twitter, my Facebook, my linked in, etc.

I never had to plug in the phone to sync any files.

As for the apps…I downloaded an app that looks at my Windows Phone account online to see what apps I’ve installed in the past…and then on the device shows me which apps I’d like to re-install. Easy as pie.

That is all for now.