Now that the gorgeous Nokia Lumia 900 Windows Phone has been officially announced at CES 2012 in Las Vegas, we’ve been putting it side-by-side with its little brother, the Nokia Lumia 800, to see just what the differences are and to help you decide which of the high-end Lumia handsets is the one for you.

Nokia Lumia 900 unveiled: 10 things you need to know

At first glance the Nokia Lumia 900 appears to purely be a bigger version of the ever-popular Nokia Lumia 800, but scratch beneath the surface and you quickly see that there’s far more to it than that. Packing plenty of top-of-the-range features, the Nokia Lumia 900 is the new king of the Nokia Lumia range.

Screen
The most obvious difference between the Nokia Lumia 900 and the Nokia Lumia 800 is screen size, as while the Lumia 800 is built around a 3.7-inch AMOLED ClearBlack display, the Lumia 900 features a far larger 4.3-inch panel, making it perfect for viewing your photos, videos and web pages.

Despite the difference in screen size, both the Nokia Lumia 900 and Nokia Lumia 800 feature the same 800 x 480 pixel resolution. As a result, the Nokia Lumia 800’s screen looks a little bit sharper, as it manages to pack the same amount of pixels as the Nokia Lumia 900 into a slightly smaller space.

The Nokia Lumia 900 has the edge when it comes to colour reproduction, however, as it features a 24-bit colour depth, rather than the Lumia 800’s 16-bits. Both devices are fitted with Corning Gorilla Glass, for an ultra-tough display that is built to easily withstand scuffs, scratches and impacts.

Performance
While both the Nokia Lumia 900 and Nokia Lumia 800 are both powerfully equipped Windows Phones, the Lumia 900 has the edge when it comes to performance. Fitted with a 1.4GHz APQ8055 Snapdragon S2 processor and 512MB RAM, this is a high-powered handset with more than enough power to offer.

As with the Nokia Lumia 800, the Nokia Lumia 900 is also fitted with a 3D graphics hardware accelerator to ensure the best performance when playing games, watching videos and viewing photos. Whichever device you choose, you can enjoy stunning performance, but the Lumia 900 is a little bit better.

When it comes to storage, however, both the Nokia Lumia 900 and Nokia Lumia 800 are equally equipped and pack 16GB of flash storage as standard. Offering plenty of space for storing your music, videos, photos and apps, you can easily carry all your favourite files in your pocket wherever you go.

Connectivity
While the Nokia Lumia 900 and Nokia Lumia 800 are similarly equipped when it comes to connectivity – with both offering EDGE Class B, GPRS Class B, HSDPA Cat10, HSUPA Cat6, WCDMA and WLAN IEEE 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi - the Nokia Lumia 900 leads the way slightly with its built-in LTE capabilities.

Letting you download data at a stunning rate of 50Mbps, the Nokia Lumia 900 is the best handset in the Nokia Lumia range for streaming video and enjoying all that the web has to offer. While it’s not vastly superior to the Nokia Lumia 800’s outstanding connectivity, it certainly does give the Nokia Lumia 900 the edge.

Camera
When put side-by-side there is very little to differentiate between the Nokia Lumia 900 and Nokia Lumia 800’s cameras. However, there is one major difference that sets them apart. The Nokia Lumia 900 is the first phone in the Nokia Lumia range to feature a built-in front-facing camera for video calls.

The 1-Megapixel front-facing camera lets you record 640 x 480 pixel video at a rate of 15fps, for video conferencing, while the rear-facing camera packs an 8-Megapixel sensor, Carl Zeiss lens, 3x digital zoom, 28mm focal length, f/2.2 F-Stop/Aperture and records 720p HD video at 1280 x 720 pixels and 30fps.

Battery
One criticism of the Nokia Lumia 800 was its battery life and while we never had any issues with our handsets mobility, Nokia has made sure that the Nokia Lumia 900 is fully equipped to deliver all-day power. Packing a highly capable BP-6EW 3.7V 1830mAh battery, the phone will never let you down.

As well as offering a great 7 hours of talk time, the Nokia Lumia 900 Windows Phone also delivers a quoted standby time of up to 300 hours (12.5 days). Not only that but it also allows a whopping 60 hours (2.5 days) of music playback and 6.5 hours of video playback, so you’ll never get bored on the move.

Taking all that makes the Nokia Lumia 800 one of the best (if not THE best) Windows Phones and fine-tuning it to be even better, the Nokia Lumia 900 is the new king of the Lumia range. While its size may be a bit too big for some pockets, it packs its chassis with power and features and we can’t wait to give it a try.

What do you think of the Nokia Lumia 900 so far and do you think it makes a worthy addition to the Nokia Lumia range? Why not let us know your thoughts in the Comments below?