This has been a busy and bumpy year for the Nokia Lumia 900. Just released this spring, it was already declared a dead-end device by Microsoft shortly after its arrival as Microsoft announced that Windows Phone 7.5 phones wouldn’t be updated to Windows Phone 8. Although this wasn’t a complete surprise (due to the hardware limitations of the current devices), many of us hoped some of the features of Windows Phone 8 would eventually make it to Windows Phone 7.5 devices. As of this writing thought, it looks like a rather limited set of features will eventually appears in the upcoming Windows Phone 7.8 update (not due until after Windows Phone 8 ships later this fall).
In the meantime, Nokia continues to do their best to continue to support their users. They just released the latest update to Windows Phone 7.5. This is not the promised 7.8 update, but rather, it is the update commonly referred to as “Tango”. We first heard that the Tango update was appearing on Nokia’s servers for the Lumia 900 a week or so ago, and now it’s finally available thought the Microsoft update process as well. Tango is a mixed bag as it brings smaller improvements and enhancements, especially on lower-end devices and it was promised long before the ill-timed MS Windows Phone 8 announcement.
This update contains a number of improvements including the “flip to silence” feature that allows you to silence a ringing phone by flipping it over (face-down) and improvements to the camera software (kind of a sore spot of the device despite the 8MP Carl Zeiss optics). In addition, there are a number of general performance enhancements like a fix for the purple tint that affected some phones, improvements in the startup process (especially when coming from a drained battery), and improvements int he performance of the proximity sensor.
I installed the update last night and I can tell you that, so far, the camera seems to do a better job than before, especially in lower light conditions. I think the camera on the iPhone 4s is still tops, but this seems to be a big improvement.
I will be using update over the next few days to see how the other improvements really shake out and I will update this posting with my findings.
It’s not what we were hoping for but it is still nice to see Nokia fulfilling its promise to continue its support for its customers!