There's a time when most probably every smartphone user comes to the point when they can't decide between two (or more) devices from different manufacturers. That's where I'm right now.

 

The Lumia 920 is one beauty of a phone, and definitely appeals to every single smartphone enthusiast out there. The state-of-an-art display and the design, and the revamped Windows Phone 8 OS, and the list goes on.

And then, the Galaxy Note II. What a beast. With its giant display and the stylus of power, it's a clear winner on the Android side.

But then I hear people ask, why is the Nokia Lumia 920 so special? Well, this one is supposed to lift Nokia back to its feet. I have no doubt it will do that.

I am currently a user of a Samsung Galaxy S II, and I could really use an upgrade. The display is too small and the resolution is getting helplessly behind from what the market has to offer.

Nokia has certainly taken a huge leap in display resolution from the previous Nokia phone I had, the Nokia N97 mini. Yeah, a 360 x 640 pixels resolution. The Lumia 920 boasts a resolution of a little higher than the standard HD, 1280 x 768 pixels.

The display uses Nokia's new PuremotionHD+ technology, which has a meaning and isn't just some tech talk. The technology means that the pixels have a quicker refresh rate, thus creating an even smoother experience around the UI on the phone.

You might have experienced a very smooth phone, but what you've probably also noticed, is that the text is hard to read when it's moving. The display on the Lumia 920 fixes this.

Nokia is known for their awesome cameras. The Lumia 920 carries the PureView brand, and is said to have a superior camera compared to other smartphones on the market.

The camera doesn't have a 41 MP sensor like the Nokia 808 PureView has. The sensor is a 8.7 MP sensor, optimized for both 16:9 and 4:3 aspect ratio. When capturing images at 4:3 aspect ratio, the image size is the full 8MP and with 16:9 it's still 7.1MP.

To clear the confusion, Nokia said the PureView doesn't mean a specific technology, or a combination of them, but rather a combination of hardware and software to produce better quality low-light images. The Lumia 920 camera certainly does this, and for me, being interested in photography, the Lumia 920 is like it was made for me.

Some fancy, special stuff about the Lumia 920? Yeah, it has wireless charging, on a tiny fatboy pillow-thingy accessory. This won't necessarily be the one top-main things on my list that make me want the Lumia 920, but it sure is quite useful. Just place your phone on a pillow and it charges. No fitting any boring cables to your phone anymore.

Yeah! Live tiles, more of them, and in more sizes this time. The live tiles certainly have an appeal on me, and increase the value the WP 8 OS carries.

All in all, the Lumia 920 is a very appealing device with its camera, display and the live tiles. It definitely has the edge of going to the first place on my smartphone-shopping list.

Well, here's the bad boy (or girl) from South Korea. This one can't charge itself up by laying on a pillow, but it has some other aces in its sleeves.

The Note is of course aimed to take the place of a mobile phone and a tablet at the same time, thus the gigantic display and a note-taking stylus.

The Note II runs Android, and allows more customization than Windows Phone.

The Note II has many nice new features by Samsung, one of them being the pop-up play, which you can now resize on the Note II (and on the SGSIII after the Jelly Bean update). Smart Stay being one of the features, I have to say it's kind of great how such a small thing was noted.

The design of the Note II is similiar to the S III's design, and is quite nifty. It looks modern, yet discreet.

I can't say how it feels in the hand, but it certainly looks stunning. The curved glass on top makes the display look awesome, and stone-ish.

Android smartphones are all about the powerful CPU. The main drawbacks on the Note II is the fact that Android cannot use the four cores it has been blessed with, and that's partly to blame the chip maker for insufficient optimization.

I'm not saying you wouldn't recognize the difference between the original Galaxy Note and the Note II, but a fact is that it's nowhere nearly as fast as it could be.

The phone does have 2 GB of RAM, which is a lot. With that you can probably satisfy all your multitasking needs.

The Galaxy Note II certainly brings the best parts of Android to the table and knows how to craft a great experience out of them. The display size might be too big for me, being already 5.5".

Which phone would you buy?