Wait a minute… Am I really pitting a phone with a dual-core 1.5 GHz processor with 2 GBs of RAM against one with only a single core 1.4 GHz processor with 512 MB of RAM? You betcha. Obviously, the spec sheet heavily favors the Samsung Galaxy S3 over the Nokia Lumia 900. See the chart below:

	Samsung Galaxy S3	Nokia Lumia 900
Screen	4.8 in SAMOLED 1280×720 (306 PPI)	4.3 in Clear Black 800×480 (216 PPI)
Processor	1.5 GHz Snapdragon S4 dual-core	1.4 GHz Snapdragon S2 single-core
RAM	2 GB	512 MB
Storage	16-32 GB	16 GB
Camera	8 MP rear, 1.9 MP front	8 MP rear, 1 MP  front
OS	Android 4.0.4	Windows Phone 7.5 Mango

But don’t count out the Nokia Lumia 900 just yet. I’ve talked about how fast Windows Phone 7 is in the past and I’ll say it again. Windows Phone doesn’t need all that horsepower under the hood to perform well. But the question is, is WP7′s optimization enough to overcome the heavyweight punch of the SGS3? Lets find out below:

Boot Up Time: In the boot up test, I turn both devices on at the same time to see which one turns on first. You know, for the times where you’re running away from a bad guy and you need to power up your phone to call the police.

• SGS3: 26 seconds.
• Lumia 900: 25 seconds.

Application Speed: In this test, I run a couple of apps to see which one loads up first. Obviously with different platforms it’s not exactly equal, but the apps are the same ones from the same developers.

• Camera – Winner: SGS3.
• ESPN – Winner: Lumia 900.
• Dicitonary – Winner: SGS3.
• Flixster – Winner: SGS3.
• Skype – Winner: Lumia 900.

Browser Comparison: In the browser test, I load up a couple of websites to see which phone loads the page up first.

• NFL.com – Winner: SGS3
• Yahoo – Winner: SGS3

Sure, the result wasn’t surprising. The Galaxy S3 beat out the Lumia 900 is most of the tests (by bigger margins too, compared to when the Lumia 900 won). But how close the Lumia 900 was to the SGS3 considering the huge deficit in hardware was surprising. Overall, if you want the faster phone you’ll get it with the SGS3. But for $200 less than the cost of the Samsung, you can opt for the Lumia 900 and still get by pretty quickly.