In addition to using the Lumia 900 in a variety of everyday usage scenarios, we also conducted some formal performance testing to see how well the handset compares to other smartphones. WP Bench is a performance-oriented benchmarking application within the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace. To date, it's one of the only effective ways to test the small-but-growing stable of WP7 handsets. We've compared CPU, Data and GPU benchmarks below with the Dell Venue Pro, Samsung Focus, Lumia 900 and HTC Arrive.
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Remember, as of now Windows Phone devices can only use single-core chips. The 1.4GHz processor here is paired with 512MB of RAM. That's pretty under-powered compared to many of the latest and greatest Android phones, but Windows Phone manages to hum along beautifully even with a (relatively) underpowered set of hardware around it. Mango also treats benchmarks quite differently than the first builds of WP7, so it's a bit tough to find too much to compare it to. Based on the library of anonymous submissions into the WP Bench Free database, the Lumia 900 marks are right in line with those provided by the new generation of Samsung Focus S smartphones. Here, versus some older model devices, the Lumina 900 shows it's significantly more powerful comparatively.
Beyond these numbers, the latest crop of Windows Phone 7 Mango devices are hard to distinguish from a pure performance standpoint. That has a lot to do with how strict the guidelines are from Microsoft about what kind of hardware can be used in these devices. The single-core CPU is also deceptively fast in real-world tasks. We had six or seven apps open at once, and never saw any lag when whisking through them or opening up another.
Beyond these numbers, the latest crop of Windows Phone 7 Mango devices are hard to distinguish from a pure performance standpoint. That has a lot to do with how strict the guidelines are from Microsoft about what kind of hardware can be used in these devices. The single-core CPU is also deceptively fast in real-world tasks. We had six or seven apps open at once, and never saw any lag when whisking through them or opening up another.
