Nokia Lumia 800 review

 
As Nokia are starting over with their new range of windows phones, the Lumia 800 would do well not to look back. It's certainly beyond the if. A shadow still follows.

Nokia Lumia 800 official photos

But it was for others to decide. The N9 was ordered to share its impressive unibody design with the Lumia 800. Good decision by Nokia - not saying fair - to give its WP7 pioneer a strong start. There are some Windows Phone mandated changes like the touch-sensitive Back, Menu and Search keys and a hardware shutter key.
The screen lost 0.2" and 54 pixels in height to make room for the capacitive controls. The oddly positioned secondary camera is gone as well. Still, the image quality of the screen seems unchanged - and we quite liked that AMOLED unit.
Read on for the full tipsengine review of nokia lumia 800

Features

• Windows Phone 7.5 OS (Mango)
• 1.4GHz Scorpion CPU, Adreno 205 GPU, Qualcomm MSM8255 chipset, 512MB of RAM
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
• Non-painted polycarbonate unibody, curved screen
• GPS receiver with A-GPS support and free lifetime voice-guided navigation
• Digital compass
• 16GB on-board storage
• Active noise cancellation with a dedicated mic
• Built-in accelerometer and proximity sensor
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack; FM Radio with RDS
• microUSB port
• Bluetooth v2.1 with A2DP and EDR
• Impressively deep and coherent SNS integration throughout the interface
  
  Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support
  • Quad-band 3G with 14.4 Mbps HSDPA and 5.7 Mbps HSUPA support
  • 3.7" 16M-color AMOLED capacitive touchscreen of 480 x 800 pixel resolution
  • Scratch resistant Gorilla glass display with anti-glare polarizer
  • 8 megapixel autofocus camera with dual LED flash, 720p@27fps video recording and fast f/2.2 lens

Main disadvantages

• Display is much dimmer than the N9's display
• No Flash or Silverlight support in browser
• No USB mass storage (file management and sync pass only through Zune)
• No video calls and no front-facing camera either
• Non-user-replaceable battery
• No memory card slot (and no 64GB version like the N9)
• microSIM card slot
• No native DivX/XviD support, videos have to be transcoded by Zune
  

A strong showing by Nokia, but it's a bit late to the Windows Phone party. They do have the design experience from being in the business longer than almost anyone else and they have Nokia Drive as their ace in the hole.
The fate of the company rests on Windows Phone Nokia being a success and much of that weight falls on the shoulders of the Lumia 800. It won't carry it alone, but it's the leader of the pack, the attention grabber.

Final words
There's not much we can say about the OS - here all Windows Phone handsets are evenly matched. But with its three proprietary apps, Nokia manages to put the Lumia 800 in a class of its own. Nokia Drive, the most valuable of the three, may not please Symbian fans, but it's designed entirely in the spirit of Windows Phone - simple to use, with clean, readable labels that are free of distractions (all positives when talking about SatNav apps).
 
There's a lot riding on the Nokia Lumia 800 and the Finns put a lot of work into it - well, they worked for a long time anyway. The final result manages to impress, but also brings some disappointment.
The camera has plenty of potential too - as it is, it's one of the best shooters in the Windows Phone world and has the potential to get even better with a software update that clears up some of its issues (like the overly eager continuous autofocus).
The curvy polycarbonate shell and Gorilla Glass with smooth, beveled edges give a huge boost to the Lumia 800's desirability too. The display is pretty great too, though the somewhat low brightness levels were kind of a disappointment. Still, it's better than most WP phones out there.
 The HTC Titan forgoes AMOLED and instead equips itself with one of the biggest screens on a mobile phone. It goes heavy on the metal and light on the plastic too. But if you like AMOLEDs and you don’t really care if you will be using a mainstream OS or not, then maybe the Samsung S8600 Wave III has that to offer along with an attractive metal build.
For comparison’s sake, the Samsung Omnia W is a similar Windows Phone. It features a SuperAMOLED screen that's a match for the Lumia's. The phone is thinner too, though it uses regular plastic and metal for its build (not necessarily bad, but it's ordinary). It also loses points on the lower-res camera (5MP), smaller storage (8GB) and most of all - no free SatNav. There are navigation apps for WP already in the Marketplace, so that can be resolved (unlike the fixed amount of storage). But on the other hand, its SIM-free price is almost half of the Lumia’s.





HTC Titan • Samsung S8600 Wave III
If you're looking at the Lumia 800, then you've probably decided against an iPhone or an Android smartphone. You want in on Windows Phone and that's that - and the 800 is a good entry point. The OS has matured, the Marketplace has grown and Nokia demonstrates its know-how in phone design and services with it.
The Nokia Lumia 800 will sell well - it has already risen to the top spots in popularity for several carriers. It will boost Nokia's market shares and Windows Phone's shares too - but chances are it won't dethrone the leaders. The bigger question is, will it save Nokia from their burning platform? It's too early to tell.

Posted in: windows