By: Hillel Fuld (@hilzfuld)

I think it might be time for a technology reality check. Sometimes, us geeks get caught up in technical details like the specs of a phone, the amount of apps the platform has, or even the display size of a device. In reality, even a person like myself who has over 200 apps on his iPhone, primarily uses a mobile phone for communication, web, and media consumption.

Does the Lumia 900 have specs as good as the 4S or the top of the line Android phones? Nope, it does not. Are there as many apps? Negative. How about the screen, is it as high res as the others? Sorry to disappoint. Does all of that truly matter to 95% of consumers? The answer is a big fat whopping NO.

Why? Because, at the end of the day, the Lumia 900 costs $100 on contract, half the price of the iPhone 4S and less than half the price of some other flagship Android phones. So you are paying less, but will your smartphone perform accordingly? Well if you judge the performance and experience of a smartphone based on whether it has Instagram or not, then yes, the Lumia 900 is not for you.

If however, you want your phone calls to sound great, your movies to be watchable and not confined to a 3.5′ screen, your phone to not act as a fingerprint magnet, your primary media device to be customizable to your needs, your internet speeds to be top-notch, and most importantly, you want instant access to all your data without the need to open up multiple apps, well then the Lumia 900, and by extension, Windows Phone, might be the platform for you. (Longest sentence ever. Sue me!)

I have zero doubt that people are going to slaughter me on Twitter or in the comments here and some will accuse me of being paid by Microsoft or Nokia, so let me be very clear. I use many mobile devices throughout the day. I often walk around with my 4S, my Galaxy Note, and my Lumia 800, not to mention my iPad. I am still using the 4S as my primary device and to be honest, that is likely to change soon.

Let’s try to stick to the point here. Nokia and Microsoft were (some might say, still are) drowning in the mobile market just one year ago.  Symbian and Windows Mobile were catastrophes and both companies knew if they didn’t act fast, that would be the end, and neither could afford that to happen. Did they wake up late? Maybe, but so did Apple (and Google). Is it too late? Absolutely not. Not if you have a superior product with a solid strategy of getting it in the hands of millions of people.

I would say that releasing a handset that competes and sometimes even defeats the best handsets on the market for half the price is not a bad start. Still stuck on the “no apps” argument? Fine, I will take the bait. 80,000 apps is not nothing. In fact, Windows Phone reached that number faster than iOS, so there! Oh, and those apps are making some serious money for developers. Read this.

To all the Microsoft haters (of whom I was a part of till recently), I can not convince you that this phone and platform are worth investing in, all I can say is summed up in two simple words… TRY IT!

Microsoft and Nokia both came with so many disadvantages here. They lacked the “Cool” factor that Apple has. They joined the race when others had been running for years. Most importantly, they already had made a very poor first impression and we all know what that means. The very comparison between the Lumia and the iPhone, the fact that people are even having this discussion, means Microsoft and Nokia are on to something here. Just try it.