NOKIA Lumia 800 1 Week Review

The black NOKIA Lumia 800, NOKIA's first Windows Phone Mango device!

I’ve always been interested in Windows Phone, ever since Microsoft decided to do something with its mobile platform back in 2010, and out came Windows Phone 7. At the time though, Windows Phone 7 was lacking even the basic of features such as threaded e-mail, copy and paste and multitasking. But now with Mango, these are here now, so it was really a hunt for which Windows Phone to get, then the big NOKIA partnership started, so lets see what we have here.

First Impressions

For any NOKIA enthusiast when you see the Lumia 800, you’ll note that it does indeed share the same design and base structure of the Symbian NOKIA N9, and this is far from a con of the device, the Lumia 800 in the hand feels like a pure quality device despite being plastic. The entire device is made by a single block of calved machine plastic which explains the colours available as its not painted those being black, cyan, magenta, but not yellow. The screen is incredible. The 3.7 inch display supports QVGA resolution like all Windows Phone devices (480×800) but the Lumia 800 adds some more umff, the display is an AMOLED Clear-Black Gorilla-Glass display … did you get all that. This is great, the Gorilla-Glass protects the display from scratches and keys in your pocket, AMOLED gives you great colours, and Clear-Black looks incredible on the black model we’ve got as the blacks really are black, so much so its hard to see the edge of the display and looks awesome through Windows Phone.

I/O and Design

I wasn’t too impressed with the fact that the volume rocker, lock button and the camera button were all on the right side of the phone, thought this would be a problem when holding it, which it kinda is but you get used to it. The volume rocker is also on the opposite side to what it is on the iPhone so more adjusting for me there. I would have loved the lock button at the top, but on the side is fair enough. Speaking of the top, thats where the phone, like the N9, confuses many of us. Up top you’ll see the 3.5inch headphone jack, fair enough, but then these two doors. Flip down one to get to the micro USB cable for syncing and charging, then slide the other and out pops the micro SIM … alot of micros here. I’m not complaining about the ports, in fact keeping to industry standards is great, just why make it so odd NOKIA, plus that door for charging is asking to snap off, although it is more stronger than I thought it would be. The bottom of the device has the speaker, which is pretty tinny, but just about good enough volume to hear it ringing or as an alarm. On the front of the device you’ll see a NOKIA logo in its usual middle placement, greyer than the N9 one, and at the bottom three capacitive buttons below the 3.7 inch display. I hate capacitive buttons, and I still do on this, the vibration haptic feedback annoys me as well, but suppose nothings perfect.

Camera

The Camera can be activated by the side bottom button on the right of the phone, which also shares an Auto Focus button, which sadly only works in Photo mode, like all WP7 devices. Half push down to focus, fully to take photo on the back camera. But no matter where you look at the front of the device, you won’t like the N9 find a front facing camera, for some reason. On the back of the device its all about the Camera. The 8 megapixel Carl Zeiss shooter takes pretty good photos, nothing special though, the dual LED flash is nice, but probably a bit too bright when it comes to taking photos, and especially video. Speaking of video, the camera can capture 720P HD video, which is quite frankly dreadful. The videos are cloudy and pixelated, when compared to an iPhone 4 (not 4S, the 4 with 720P) the NOKIA just looks rubbish. However, NOKIA have told us and many others that a software update is coming to fix “cloudy, slow auto-focus and more”, the update can’t come any sooner if you ask me, as in some situations its not bad, then others its terrible which is evident really its software related. Being a Windows Phone there’s no Photo editing built in, other than a useless Autofix function, but many are in the Marketplace, although also been a Windows Phone, you can easily and quickly add Photos and Videos to FaceBook and beyond, which is done very neatly. Photos are stored in the Pictures hub, and the random picture background can be both interesting and annoying, but luckily you can set a permanent in the Settings.

Windows Phone 7

Hard to review NOKIA’s first Windows Phone device without talking a bit about Windows Phone. But to be honest, if you take away the Microsoft Windows branding away, its actually a very good OS, and looks incredible on the Lumia 800 display. The Live Tiles do look awful in a solid picture of the devices for example, but in practice are really good and useful, much better than the boring icon interface we’re all used to from iOS, Android and beyond. Widgets are annoying and icons are boring, but Live Tiles are that happy medium and I like that.

I’m not an over social person, but I absolutely love the social network integration Windows Phone brings to the table. The Peoples hub is incredible, integrating all your FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn or MSN statuses in one, and allowing you to add statuses to one or more of the services you’ve linked, this works really well. This is also where your Contacts are shown, and even shows Contacts not in your Phone Book from your linked social networks … unfortunately having them there or not is not an option, but tapping on a letter allows you to quickly bring up a letter to instantly go to, and you do have a search button at the bottom if you’re Mr Overpopular. But it doesn’t stop there, the Messaging app doesn’t just have SMS/MMS messaging, it integrates with FaceBook Messenger and Microsoft Messenger (MSN) and you can have chats through all services as if texting, it even lets you switch back and forth between services with indications of whether they’re online such as “NAME is not online, try texting instead”. You can also add anyone to the Start screen and instantly see anything about them, love it, great for a partner of just a real BFF so instantly see what they are up to in a not at all stalky fashion.

Zune is alright, nothing special, but does the job. Zune is a much better music player than I’ve found on Android or beyond, but sadly no iPod. You can get music from the Zune Marketplace, which integrates in with apps, kinda like iTunes, see what Microsoft are doing there! The phone also has an FM Radio, probably the only big not on iPhone feature, which works when you plug your headphones in.

Marketplace

One big thing people don’t go with Windows Phones because of is apps, people think its all at iOS and Android …. and okay not everything is there, but they are arriving and all the big title games and apps are actually already in the Marketplace, games like Fruit Ninja and Angry Birds for example are there, in fact nearly all apps I had iOS have equivalents or are there. And as I mentioned earlier, drag to the left/right and you’ve got the Zune Music Store to buy music at pretty much identical as iTunes prices, but its all DRM-Free so doesn’t really matter where you get it from.

X-Box Live

One thing I never understand was when Microsoft put X-Box Live on iOS, either way its on Windows Phone, but unlike the iOS version that just shows achievements and messages from actual X-Box games, on Windows Phone you can get achievements through the apps on your phone, which is really cool, kinda like Game Center on iOS! But unlike Game Center, with X-Box Live, if you’ve got an X-Box and a Windows Phone, you’ve double the opportunity to gain achievements and more, awesome eh!

IE9 Mobile

…..Just wait before everyones stopped cringing, right. Would I blow your mind if I said IE on Windows Phone isn’t actually that bad! Its not, its got incredible HTML5 support, its pretty fast and renders pages very well! There’s a few things Safari beats it with design wise, but functionally its just as good. So I don’t actually mind Internet Explorer on Windows Phone, still sucks on the PC, but as a Mac user that don’t bother me. So yeah, go IE Mobile I say, gone are the days of Pocket IE on Windows Mobile hallelujah, here comes a decent web browser on Windows Phone.

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NOKIA LUMIA 800

PROS

Fast phone, looks incredible, blacks are really black on the beautiful display. Apps load quickly and perform well. The built in hubs are awesome for social networking and more, and unlike other OS’ where they’ve been gimicky, they actually work on Windows Phone.

CONS

The Camera isn’t that special, in fact even NOKIA noted that, but did say it was a software bug and an update will be coming early 2012 though a date would’ve been nice. The Marketplace is getting their but still missing some crucial apps, but suppose give it time. The top doors are asking to snap off. And why have NOKIA not included Personal Hotspot (Wi-Fi Share) in the Lumia devices, once again they’ve said its coming in an update and blamed FCC regulations, ugh.

OVERALL

Windows Phone 7 Mango is a smooth, quick OS, even on a single core it seems to outperform the 4S and Android devices like the S II, which is a bit odd. The OS is quick, the phone looks incredible, whats not to like. Some bugs like in the Camera I hope get fixed soon, but overall very good. The syncing is smooth and does its job on the Mac, think Zunes a bit design over functionality though. But all in all great phone, one of the best out there!

Score: 8.5 / 10 = Let down purely by bugs in Camera and lack of Personal Hotspot, all of which are expected in software updates, then it’d be a solid 9.