While Samsung has dominated the headlines with the launch of its Galaxy S3 device this week, V3 also managed to get its hands on the eagerly awaited Lumia 900 from Nokia set to be released in the UK later this month.

The firm will be hoping that the device can help turn its fortunes around, as it faces a tough financial future and sales of its first high-end device, the Lumia 800, have proved lacklustre, particularly in the UK.

One of the V3 team is an active user of the Lumia 800, though, and so with the 900 arriving in the office, it was the perfect opportunity to compare the two devices and give the 900 a once over.

The first thing you notice about the Lumia 900 is its size, both compared with the 800 and on the market as whole, with its 4.3in screen in the same category as the HTC One, the recently launched Galaxy S3 and dwarfing the 3.7in screen of the Lumina 800 (as shown below).

This helps make text input for emails, texts and web browsing easier than the Lumia 800, although as users of the world's millions upon millions of iPhone users know, smaller screens don't make it that much harder to input text either.

While it certainly feels sizeable in the hand, it weighs just 160g, only 18g more than the 800 despite the huge difference in size.

Anyone upgrading from the Lumia 800 or a similar sized device, such as the iPhone, will take some time to get used to the larger size, but in time is likely to enjoy the increased display area for web browsing, gaming and photos.

Another notable difference to the 800 is the inclusion of a front-facing camera with a 1.3-megapixel lens - a feature not available on the 800 - allowing full use of the recently launched Skype app to make video calls with contacts on other devices.

For taking pictures, the phone has the same 8-megapixel camera as the Lumia 800, which is more than adequate for taking high-quality images under various conditions.

The 900 also comes pre-loaded with the Tango version of the Windows Phone operating system, which offers a number of tweaks designed to improve the speed performance of the system, although the Lumia 800 is hardly slow either.

Beyond this, though, there is little notably different about the device, boasting exactly the same design of button placement and volume controls as the 800, just expanded over the larger size unit.

This isn't a bad thing, though, as the Lumia design is nice to look at, sits comfortably in the hand, and is certainly no worse than any Android device, which are all fairly identikit in their design, and offers a nice alternative to the iPhone's style.

The issue for Nokia is not the hardware, really, it never has been, it's convincing the average member of the public to put aside their lust for iPhones or Android devices, and getting them to realise the Windows Phone software is worth the plunge.

To do this, it's going to take some serious marketing spend, combined with word of mouth from the small pool of Lumia users convincing their friends of the benefits of the system's live tile functionality, to show there is another way from the iOS and Android two-horse race disappearing into the distance.

Check back next week for a full review of the Lumia 900 on V3.

Nokia launched two high-end devices at its annual Nokia World event in London on Wednesday and we got a chance to spend some hands with the Lumia 800 Windows Phone handset.

The flagship Lumia 800 is set to take the challenge to the Apple iPhone 4S and Samsung Galaxy S II and it bears a striking resemblance to the Nokia N9, which was released in selected European countries and uses the MeeGo platform.

The Lumia 800 exudes high quality craftsmanship, with a one-piece injection moulded body that Nokia touted as scratch proof. The device is also comfortable to hold, but isn't the lightest on the market as it weighs 142g.

Nokia has integrated an 3.7in Amoled screen with a resolution of 480x800 and colours are crisp with blacks particularly deep when compared to other devices. Brightness also seemed very good as we were using the device in a low light environment.

The 1.4GHz single-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and 512MB of RAM are not the highest specifications around, but the device has been optimised to get the full benefit from the software, much like Apple has with the iOS. This makes the Lumia 800 extremely responsive, and there is no noticeable lag.

The Windows platform will also help the firm attract business users to the device, as it comes with Exchange support and Mobile Microsoft Office suite.

Some key features that set the Nokia apart from competing Windows Phone devices is the eight megapixel camera with an optimised flash for low-light conditions. The Nokia N8 had an excellent camera and the firm has clearly carried this through to the Lumia 800.

With Microsoft having already laid down specifications for the Windows Phone Mango platform before Nokia signed its deal with Microsoft, the Finnish firm has been unable to make its hardware substantially difference to other devices from HTC and Samsung.

However, Nokia has managed to sneak in a few of its own apps, the highlight of which is Nokia Drive, a free voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation system, a first for Windows Phone devices.

With a price of €420, the Lumia 800 isn't cheap, but with the services on offer and good performance it could be winner. Nokia is still behind when it comes to core specifications but as Apple has proved, raw processing power isn't everything.

Nokia is set to embark on its biggest marketing campaign with the Lumia series, so expect to see adverts for the device plastered everywhere in the next few weeks ahead of its November launch.

V3 will have a full review of the device in due course and we also have a video demo of the phone in action:

Details of the 'Mango' Windows Phone 7 update have been available for some time now, so Microsoft's briefing in London on Tuesday mainly acted as a way for us to see the system in action. The rollout is also frustratingly distant and, with many crucial features being added, we're impatient to actually get our hands on a handset with the new OS.

That's partly because the developer tools were released this week, and within them are a fair number of clues about what the update will contain. Interestingly, Microsoft calls this Windows Phone 7.1 in the developer software, but was keen to point out that this will not be the final name for the update (7.5 is more likely, as this is a major release).

The firm did tell us that Mango will roll out to all Windows 7 handsets in the autumn, and that it will be completely free. New handset manufacturers are signing up too. There's the obvious addition of Nokia here, but Acer, Fujitsu and ZTE are also signed up to produce phones.

Microsoft is excited in particular about ZTE as it has the power to produce excellent phones at very low prices. This could be important to Microsoft, which it is claimed has only sold around 600,000 Windows Phone 7 handsets to date.

The new features are worth waiting for, though. Take, for example, the new unified inbox. It's a lot smarter than those on other platforms. Its main advantage is that you can link accounts together.

This allows someone to have their work email in one place, but to bundle their Gmail and Hotmail accounts. Most other operating systems take an all-or-nothing approach, with no way to keep work and play separate. Microsoft is also allowing contacts to be grouped together, so users can send emails or text messages to lists of people they define.

The ability to use Office 365 from the phone for cloud-based storage and as collaborative tools with other people in your team is likely to impress business users. The support for standard Word, Excel and PowerPoint files remains a key selling point too, and Microsoft was keen to point out that third parties can also add support for their file types.

Also interesting are the alterations to Bing search, which now recognises barcodes, and DVD or book covers. Simply take a photo, and the device will find out what it is and offer you information about it, or the chance to buy.

Business users will continue to love the Exchange support, and Office integration is improved too. There's the ability to communicate with Microsoft's Skydrive and Office 365 for cloud-based storage and collaboration.

There are also some very interesting developer stats. Microsoft says that there are 1,000 new applications being launched each week, coming from around 42,000 developers. The developer toolkit has been downloaded some 1.6 million times, indicating a fair amount of interest in the system.

The headline stat for Microsoft, though, has to be the fact that it will soon have more applications in its marketplace than rival RIM. But 18,000 doesn't sound like all that many when you compare it to the 100,000 for Android and 500,000 on Apple's iOS platform.

But it's the features that will entice users to adopt the platform, and it's good to see that Microsoft has remembered this. We're certainly impressed by what we've seen so far, although we think the wait until the autumn is going to hamper the company which is already struggling to attract customers.

The long awaited ability to be able to copy and paste on Windows Phone 7 is finally starting to arrive for those on the fledgling platform, and V3.co.uk was eager to see how the feature would improve the use of the phone.

After a painless update process - no bricking issues have been reported this time around - we found that the Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V ability has been well designed and is easy to manage.

Clicking on a word on a web page brings up a little clipboard icon (see below) and two cursors that you can drag to the left and the right to increase the amount of text you want to copy, as is standard on other operating systems.

Similarly, clicking on the URL also brings up the ability to copy the address bar, while within the text message applications the entire message can be copied instantly under a list of options that also includes forward and delete.

When you want to paste your copy you simply tap the screen in the message box or URL bar, for example, and the clipboard icon appears again so you can insert your text. The icon then disappears, but can be brought back by dragging it from slightly off screen if you want to paste again.

Overall, it's quick and easy to use and very intuitive, much like the rest of the Windows Phone interface. While it seems slightly odd Microsoft wasn't able to include it from the off for such a simple function, the firm has at least made sure the update version is more than adequate.

Other improvements in the NoDo update include faster loading times for apps, improved marketplace search and stability - it was prone to crashing and the only way to open it again was to turn the phone on and off again. Displaying the phone's MAC address also makes it easier to join certain Wi-Fi networks.

Microsoft said it has also improved integration with Facebook accounts and made switching between camera and video modes more stable.

The firm has also announced developer updates at its MIX conference in the last few days, such as the ability to access the Live Agents functions, multi-task, run apps in the background and push notifications. The Live Tiles feature can also be used to display dynamically updating information within the application's icon on the phone's front screen.

With these developments, and the backing of analysts who think the platform is set for sizeable growth, Microsoft could well be on its way to challenging Android and Apple for market share.

Video of the copy and paste in action: