Nokia Lumia iPhone 5 Series Windows 8 vs. iOS

Following the recent the release of the latest and greatest Windows phone, Verizon's Nokia Lumia Icon, news continues to surface: Facebook Messenger for Windows phone arrived March 5 as covered on Tech Crunch. Now it's time to compare the Nokia Lumia Icon to Apple's iPhone 5 series. Here are the major differences we noticed.

Differentiator: Display: Nokia Lumia Icon has a 5-inch screen while the iPhone 5 series offers 4-inch screens. At first glance, it's obvious the Nokia Lumia Icon is larger with a significantly bigger screen than the iPhones 5, 5s and 5c. Icon is also a little heavier than the iPhone. The heaviness is caused by Icon's larger screen. iPhone 5s has 1136 by 640 pixels, or 326 pixels per inch, compared to Icon's 1080 by 1920 pixels.

Apps. As is usually the case, the apps you need dictate which phone you should buy. If you really want to use your phone to manipulate Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, then you will want to try the Nokia Lumia Icon. This is a good phone. It works. It's fast. It's a nice, handy size. Most of the other phone functions you need are probably here. And it definitely handles spreadsheets more like Excel on a PC, than Apple's Numbers app does. When it comes to apps, however, the iPhone has access to far apps than the Windows phone has. Developers naturally get their apps in place for iPhone and Android, with the vast majority of phone users, before they get them in place for the relatively small number of Windows phone users.

Battery life: In our unscientific testing the Nokia Lumia Icon went longer without a charge than the iPhone 5. Nokia Lumia Icon comes with a battery saver app and also gives you an estimate in days and hours of the amount of time before it will need charging, which was nice to see. Icon easily handled an average day of work after being charged up at night. The iPhone 5 requires charging during the day if it's used heavily.