Nokia has announced its first 4G LTE enabled smartphone - Nokia Lumia 900. AT&T is expected to release the device on April 8 with a price tag of $99.99. Lumia 900 is going to be Nokia's flagship Windows smartphone. On the other hand, AT&T's wireless rival - Verizon - has been rolling out LG Lucid - a budget 4G smartphone from March 29. This new Android powered smartphone has been priced at $79.99.

Let's see which of these two sub-$100 4G LTE smartphones is better.

Display

Nokia Lumia 900 sports 4.3-inch AMOLED display with a resolution of 480 X 800 pixels. Nokia's ClearBlack display is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass.

LG Lucid has 4-inch IPS LCD touchscreen with same 480 X 800 pixels resolution.

Though the resolution is same, Lumia 900's screen is bigger than LG's bet making it winner in display section.

Processor and Memory

Nokia's upcoming flagship model is powered with 1.4 GHz Scorpion processor fitted on Qualcomm APQ8055 Snapdragon chipset. It has 512MB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage. Lumia 900 lacks microSD card.

On the other hand, LG Lucid has dual-core 1.2 GHz processor with 1GB of RAM. The phone has 8GB of internal storage and has expandable memory options. It supports microSD card up to 32GB.

LG Lucid is a winner in this section.

Connectivity

Nokia Lumia 900 is the company's first 4G LTE smartphone. It features Bluetooth v2.1 with A2DP+EDR, Wi-Fi, NFC, assisted GPS, stereo Radio with RDS and microUSB v2.0.

LG Lucid also joins the Android LTE smartphone lineup. Other connectivity features in this phone are Bluetooth v3.0, Wi-Fi with hotspot functionality, assisted GPS and microUSB v2.0.

Both the phones fare almost equally in connectivity department.

Camera

Nokia Lumia 900 packs 8-megapixel Carl Zeiss Optic lens with dual-LED support. However, the camera records videos at 720p resolution at maximum. It has a secondary 1.3-megapixel camera that records VGA video at 30 fps.

In comparison, LG Lucid sports 5-megapixel rear snapper that records 1080p videos at 30fps. The camera has flash support. Also there is a front facing 0.3-megapixel camera in the device.

Lumia 900 has a better camera but has let us down in the video recording department. LG Lucid, despite having a lower resolution camera, records full-HD videos. Hence, it is a draw in this section.

User Interface

The same old question of Android VS WP Mango rises again. Windows Phone Mango has got a simple and nice interface. Some users like WP7.5 better than iOS and Android operating systems. LG Lucid is powered with last year's Gingerbread OS. It is disappointing as it misses Ice Cream Sandwich out of the box. But, it also has a better app support than Windows mobile platform.

Again a draw in this section too.

Verdict

The success of these phones depends upon the price and taste of users. LG Lucid is more affordable and undercuts Lumia 900. But there are many Android based LTE-enabled smartphones available in the market. On the other hand, Lumia 900 is the only 4G LTE Windows-based smartphone. So take your pick.

(reported by Johnny Wills, edited by Surojit Chatterjee)