Review conclusion:
With iOS 5 and Ice Cream Sandwich both around the corner, this platform still has an enormous uphill battle to climb to carve out its stake of the market — and with Microsoft’s lack of support for dual-core processors and LTE, they’re not going to win any all-out spec wars. But still, at no point while using this year-old hardware did I feel encumbered or out-of-date — in fact, I usually felt like the software was taking better advantage of the available processing power than the much more muscular Android handsets I’ve been testing over the last few months. Put simply, regardless of your preconceptions, Windows Phone finally deserves an honest look the next time you’re ready to buy a phone — particularly as we start to see new devices come to market over the next few weeks.