Nokia has hyped the Nokia Lumia 900's 8-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, and you know what that means: it's time for a camera shoot-out. I traipsed around San Francisco with four smartphones with 8-megapixel cameras: the Lumia 900 and the iPhone 4S to see just how well they captured the moment. I took close to 20 comparison shots, but to keep you from going blind, I narrowed it down to the two best phones and the 11 most representative pictures.

I'm no professional photographer, but I did keep a keen eye out for differences in focal range, overall detail, color tone, and contrast. I share my opinion below, but check out the photos for yourself to make up your own mind.

Unless otherwise stated, all photos were taken using automatic settings. I've resized the images, but left them otherwise untouched.… Read more

By the time you can finally buy the eye-popping Nokia Lumia 900 Windows Phone on AT&T on Sunday, it will be one of the first two Windows Phones, ever, to surf 4G LTE. (The HTC Titan II, also a Windows Phone, will be the other.)

It's one thing to claim lightning-fast data speeds and another to actually produce them, so the two of us took two Lumia 900 devices on a network test in our respective cities -- Brian in New York, and Jessica in San Francisco.

Though we used the same BandWidth app for Windows Phone OS on identical handsets, results were dramatically different.… Read more

With its eminently approaching April 8 release date, the Nokia Lumia 900 from AT&T is available for preorder today.

The carrier is investing a lot in this handset, which costs $100. In an interview with CNET, Jeff Bradley, AT&T's device head, called the Lumia 900 the company's "hero phone."

In addition to that, he noted that its launch would be a "notch above anything we've ever done," including the iPhone's launch.

But the one in need of a hero, perhaps, is none other than Nokia itself.

CNET's … Read more

Packed with a number of popular Chinese apps, the HTC Eternity goes on sale in China today, making it the first Windows Phone to be sold in the country.

According to the Windows Team Blog, the HTC Eternity has a 4.7-inch screen and two cameras (one in the front, the other in the rear).

The Mango device is also being sold as an unlocked or "open market" handset, meaning that customers can buy the phone and then choose a carrier to activate it.

In Beijing, Microsoft China held a press event to show the Eternity's Chinese-language … Read more

In middle school, my best friend and I used live by the motto "dare to be different." We were all about expressing our individuality by wearing mismatched clothes and staging silly stunts just to stand out from the crowd, but in the case of tech, can being too different be a liability?

PocketNow recently got its hands on some mockups of a reimagined Windows Phone user interface. The concepts came from an unidentified Nokia R&D senior graphic designer, who now works at Accenture, and are somewhat reminiscent of the experience imagined for some of the company's concept phones, such as the Nokia Gem. That all-touch-screen device changes every time you use a different function.

The former Nokia designer's concept, while unique with its floating icons and artsy background (see the above image), looks confusing and unintuitive, but I'm not here to criticize the design. (It should be noted that the designer did this as a personal project, and though it's certainly not my cup of tea, I applaud her for trying something different. After all, ideas aren't born out of passivity.) Instead, two things stuck out for me. … Read more

On Friday, Apple's third iteration of the iPad arrives in stores.

With a higher-resolution display, a 4G LTE connection, and a better camera, the tablet isn't a completely new device, but that hasn't stopped it from sending consumer interest through the roof. Already Apple has sold out of online preorders, and analysts are suggesting that the company could sell a record-breaking 1 million iPads on the first day of sales alone.

If you really want a new iPad, my guess is that either you've ordered one already or you're going to get in line on … Read more

There comes a point in every corporation's life when it's time to usher on steadfast loyalists into the brave new world of next-generation products. For Microsoft and Windows Mobile, that time is now.

On May 9, Microsoft will be closing down, boarding up, and never looking back on its Windows Marketplace for Mobile, an app store it launched in 2009 for Windows Mobile 6.5, the last iteration of its Windows Mobile OS.

The message to hangers-on is clear: Windows Phone Marketplace and the Windows Phone OS overhaul are Microsoft's OS future now--and there's no going back.… Read more

According to All About Windows Phone, the Windows Phone marketplace has more than 70,000 apps available, as of February 26, 2012.

And recently, Google just added one more to the mix.

For those of you who own a device running Windows Phone and aren't a big fan of Microsoft's Bing, Google recently released its own search app for the operating system.

The app features Google's Autocomplete function and My Location, which lets you enter in your current location and search for places and businesses nearby.

Voice Search is also included, allowing you to search for an … Read more

HTC has beaten out ZTE, Nokia, and other vendors hoping to capitalize on the growing Chinese market.

After opening a flagship store in Beijing yesterday, HTC is said to have started accepting preorders for the HTC Titan. The move reportedly made the Titan the first Windows Phone sold in China, beating out the line of devices that HTC's competitors have planned for the country this year.

According to Chinese site Weibo, which first reported on the story, HTC is selling the device for about $700 without a contract.

The HTC Titan is one of the more capable Windows Phone … Read more