Taking both Nokia's and Microsoft's hope forward, the all-new Nokia Lumia 900 hit AT&T store shelves Sunday at a price tag of $99 with a two-year contract. The Windows smartphone has an eye-catching unibody design, coupled with key features like LTE support, vivid 4.3-inch screen and an 8 megapixel camera, but what actually makes the difference is its attractive price.

While it's still to be seen how the Nokia Lumia 900 performs in the so-called smartphone battlefield once it's out in the wild, the device has been measured up well. According to ZDNet, the phone is likely the best Windows Phone currently available in the U.S. The site even predicted that it would be a hot seller on AT&T.

Another report by CNET ranked Nokia Lumia 900 as excellent and said that with the smartphone,Nokia proves that it has the chops to compete.

However, some other reports didn't seem impressed by the operating system of the smartphone. According to AllThingsD, Nokia Lumia 900 is the best home yet for Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 operating system, but still doesn't measure up to rival smartphones.

Joshua Topolsky at The Verge seemed impressed with the phone's hardware, but said that he struggled to find a single thing this platform could do better than Android 4.0 or iOS 5.1.

According to Engadget, the Lumia 900 doesn't quite hold up as a flagship device but given the price, network speed and beauty of the device, it's a no-brainer purchase.

A lot is riding on this phone's success, says a Bloomberg report. For Nokia and its partner Microsoft, it's a chance to become relevant in a marketplace that has largely passed them by. For AT&T, it's an opportunity to attract users to its newest high-speed data network and set itself apart now that its monopoly on Apple (AAPL) iPhone sales in the U.S. has expired.

While AT&T is prepping up for a stream of new phones in the next couple of months, one of its unique devices has already been made public - the Samsung Galaxy Note for $300 on contract. Nokia Lumia 900 is going on sale this weekend, but people are already familiar with the Galaxy Note.

On these points, Samsung's device seems to have an upper hand. But on price alone, Nokia's newest is likely to be favored. After all, while buying a smartphone, people usually don't think about how many cores the phone's processor has, but care about how the phone looks and how much it costs.

Let's have a look at how the two smartphones stack up against each other based on their features and other detailed specs.

Design: Weighing 160 grams (5.64 oz) the Nokia Lumia 900 comes with dimensions of 127.8 x 68.5 x 11.5 mm. On the other hand, Samsung Galaxy Note looks a bit heavy with 178 grams (6.28 oz). It comes with dimensions of 147 x 83 x 10 mm.

Display: Nokia Lumia 900 features a 4.3-inch 800 x 480 pixels AMOLED Plus capacitive ClearBlack touch-screen with 217 ppi density. Samsung Galaxy Note sports a 5.3-inch 800 x 1280 pixels Super AMOLED capacitive multi-touch screen with 285 ppi density.

Processor & RAM: Nokia Lumia 900 is powered by a single core 1.4 GHz Scorpion processor, Qualcomm APQ8055 Snapdragon chipset and Adreno 205 GPU. The device has 16GB internal storage and 512MB RAM. Galaxy Note features a dual core 1.5 GHz processor, Qualcomm MSM8660 chipset, 1GB RAM and 16 GM internal storage.

Operating System: Nokia Lumia 900 runs on Windows Phone 7.5 Mango. On the other hand, Samsung Galaxy Note runs on Android 2.3 with TouchWiz UI. However, the phone is slated to receive the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update.

Camera: The Lumia 900 features a rear-facing 8 megapixel camera with 3264 x 2448 pixels unit, Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus and dual LED flash camera with 720p video capture capabilities. It also sports a secondary 1.3 megapixel camera for video calling.

On the other hand, the Galaxy Note comes with a rear-facing 8 megapixel camera, with 3264 x 2448 pixels unit, autofocus and LED flash camera with 1080p video capture capabilities. The device also has a secondary 2 megapixel camera.

Data: Nokia Lumia 900 supports LTE, HSDPA+ (4G) 21.1 Mbps, HSUPA 5.76 Mbps, Cat3, 50 Mbps DL and 25 Mbps UL. The Galaxy Note supports LTE, HSDPA+ (4G) 21.1 Mbps, HSDPA 14.4 Mbps, HSUPA 5.76 Mbps and UMTS.

WLAN/Bluetooth/USB: Nokia Lumia 900 features Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1 version with A2DP and EDR, and microUSB 2.0 versions.

Samsung Galaxy Note sports Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, DLNA, Wi-Fi Direct, Wi-Fi hotspot, Bluetooth 3.0 version with A2DP, EDR and microUSB v2.0.

Battery: The Lumia 900 sports a standard Li-Ion 1830 mAh (BP-6EW) battery that is expected to give up to 7 hours of talk time, up to 60 hours of music play and up to 350 hours of standby time.

Samsung Galaxy Note sports a standard Li-Ion 2500 mAh (BP-6EW) battery that gives up to 10 hours of talk time and up to 250 hours of standby time.

Some More Details on Specs

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