The Nokia Lumia 800 is here, packing Windows Phone 7.5, an amazing screen and a touch-and-feel that has to be experienced to be believed.
Looks and Design
Multitasking
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Looks and Design
The device is slimmer than average Nokia devices at 12.1 mm and feels great in your hand. Its body is made of polycarbonate, which is a form of plastic. Rather than painting it in different colours, Nokia has coloured the casing itself so that even after months of rough usage it won't fade.
The keys on the device are placed on the right side, which includes the volume rocker at the top followed by the power key that also controls the display and standby. The power key placement is odd since many device manufacturers place keys on top of the devices for easy access.
The Nokia Lumia 800 is a highly crafted and neatly detailed smartphone that feels fantastic in the hand. We had reservations that a 3.7-inch screen would be too big but as long term Nokia N8 users, it pretty much shares the same footprint, so if you’re worried about the size you needn’t be worried.
The screen is a touchscreen panel with
3.7" AMOLED unit of WVGA resolution (480 x 800 pixels) with 251ppi pixel density, Gorilla Glass and ClearBlack Display technology, which is a pretty huge hit list for one device.
As for the brightness, the Nokia N9 had one of the brightest AMOLED screens we've seen, easily topping SuperAMOLED in this regard. We expected the same from the Lumia 800, but we were disappointed - at the brightest setting, the 800 was only as bright as the N9 at 50% brightness.
The headphones that come with the Nokia Lumia 800 are pretty standard 3.5mm in-ear headphones that feel pretty comfortable and should see you through travels with ease. The nice touch for us, though, is the inclusion of a silicon slip for your Nokia Lumia 800, so you don't need to worry about scratches of accidental damage getting to your new prize possession.
Key features
- 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
- 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
Tech Spec and performance
The Nokia Lumia 800 is built around a 1.4GHz single-core processor and runs the Windows Phone 7.5 operating system. You’ll find that it’s backed by 512MB of RAM and even comes with a dedicated graphics controller, in the form of the Adreno 205 GPU.
The Nokia Lumia 800 is built around a 1.4GHz single-core processor and runs the Windows Phone 7.5 operating system. You’ll find that it’s backed by 512MB of RAM and even comes with a dedicated graphics controller, in the form of the Adreno 205 GPU.
While tech-heads will rattle on that you need a dual-core processor to be current, we’ll let them sound-off in their own space and simply say that the Nokia Lumia 800 is fast, more than fast enough to load apps with ease. You won’t find any lag or delay when loading an image, or the web browser and moving around is easy.
Nokia Lumia 800: Windows Phone OS
The Lumia 800 comes with 7.5 Mango and one of its advantages over the original version is multitasking. The OS still doesn’t do true multitasking; things are being done the iOS way. Apps not in the foreground are suspended, but the OS has ways to take over and carry out the task for them.
Windows Phone OS on the Nokia Lumia 800 follows the standard tile-based layout that is common across the platform, apart from there are a host of Nokia specific apps, such as Nokia Drive, Nokia Maps and Nokia Music to name three. However, rather than being static icons, these tiles have been designed to be Live Tiles, so they change and update whenever something new arises. For example, whenever you get an email, Facebook update, or text.
To switch between apps you press and hold the Back key (that's right, the Back key, not the Windows key). The app switcher itself looks similar to that of Symbian or WebOS: thumbnail snapshots of the apps, ordered chronologically left to right.
Multitasking
It’s a great way to interact with the Nokia Lumia 800, as it means you can simply give it a glance and if nothing has changed, move on. However, if there is a change you’ll spot it right away without having to tap down into the application, which is a real time saver.
We have to admit, Microsoft is playing something of a game of catch-up in terms of apps, but the marketplace seems to be adding apps on an almost hourly rate. That said, you’ll find the Nokia Lumia 800 pretty much delivers everything you need straight from the box and the extra Nokia apps certainly help it stand out from other Windows Phone devices out there.
Homescreen • Main menu
Here's a demo of the Nokia Lumia 800 in action.
Camera and multimedia
Lumia 800 comes with an 8 megapixel camera, which is made better with Carl Zeiss optics. Image quality is great and auto focus works flawlessly. For low light photography, the device features a dedicated LED flash as well, which is good for close ups but not for wide-angled pictures. The camera is also able to capture high definition videos at 720p, and that too at 30 frames per second.
The camera UI is pretty simple – you have your viewfinder and some controls on the right. From top to bottom they are the still/video camera toggle, virtual zoom buttons and an extended settings menu. On the left you have an arrow that takes you to the images taken with the camera, alternatively you can do a swipe gesture too.
Nokia Lumia 800: Storage and backup
The Nokia Lumia 800 comes with 16GB of internal memory, which is more than enough for most users as it allows for hundreds of hours of music and movies along with all the apps you can ever wish to access. One drawback with ddevice is it doesn't have any memory expansion slot.
The thing is, you may not need extra memory, as the Nokia Lumia 800 comes with access to Microsoft's online backup solution, SkyDrive, which gives you access to 25GB of online storage all for free. All you need to do is signup to get an account and you're off.
Then again, if you're worried about storage space then you don't even need to store music on your Nokia Lumia 800, as you can simply take advantage of the Nokia Radio Mix software that comes as part of Nokia Music. As long as you have a connection you can stream music from any genre or style you like. What's more, if you just happen to want to download the odd track or two to listen to when offline, you can do so.
Battery performance
Lumia 800 features a 1450 mAh battery pack that is capable of powering it for up to two days of nominal usage, but as with all smartphones, battery life is affected deeply by usage pattern and the use of 3G networks.
Conclusion
The Lumia 800 is good and has some impressive performance figures as well. But like every device, it also has its own set of flaws like the non-expandable memory and the micro SIM slot, which will be a problem for users with older SIM cards as they might loose their data in the process of upgrading to a micro SIM.
But overall, the device's performance is flawless and it is definitely an object of desire for people who like looks and performance.