Nokia Lumia 800 Reviewed!

Nokia has announced theirs first Windows Phone-powered device in Malaysia a month ago. Announced the Nokia Lumia 710 and Lumia 800. I manage to get a review unit of the Nokia Lumia 800 from Nokia Malaysia.

Has been using it for almost a week now, here I'm gonna share my thought and impression of the new Nokia Lumia 800.

Let's start with the technical specification

• 1.4GHz single core Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8255 processe
• 3.7-inch ClearBlack AMOLED screen with 800x480 pixel
• 512MB of RAM & 16GB internal storage
• 8MP Carl Zeiss optics with dual LED flash
• WiFi 802.11b/g/n & Bluetooth v2.1
• HSDPA 14.4Mbps, HSUPA 5.76Mbps
• 1450mAh internal battery

Design and display

The Lumia 800 design is identical with the MeeGo-powered Nokia N9 with add-ons dedicated-camera button, smaller screen size of 3.7-inch and capacitive touch buttons. The capacitive touch below the screen was very natural and didn’t set off although it’s very near to the screen.

The design of one-piece of polycarbonate matte finish material is solid but exudes a premium soft touch feel. The proportions of the phone are very ideal for gripping during phone call or one-handed texting. It has three colours to choose from; Cyan & Fuchsia which go well with the youngster and the Black giving corporate impression.

It uses a 3.7-inch 480x800 ClearBlack AMOLED smooth curve design screen with Gorilla Glass corning. Despite the pixels density is not as high as others, the AMOLED with ClearBlackDisplay able to provide blacker blacks that able to present bright, punchy colour production and better viewing even under sunlight.

The internal storage in the Lumia 800 is fixed only 16GB with no microSD card slot and there were no 64GB variant like the Nokia N9. Here the SkyDrive come in, there will be 25GB FREE cloud storage come with your Windows Live’s account. You can store your photos, videos, documents and etc into it and get access from your phone. Of course huge data transfers will involved.

Windows Phone 7.5 and performance

Nokia Lumia is one of the first smartphone to ship with Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango). The main screen is dressed up with live tiles bring start screen to life with glance-and-go updates. Swiping to the right will list all the applications installed in alphabetic. The tiles’ colour is customisable to different colour to suit your mood, phone case or even your clothes.

The processor speed of the Lumia 800 is using a single-core 1.4GHz Snapdragon and 512MB of memory; this is behind the dual-core processor trite in the Android and iPhone devices. The one core isn’t a limitation; the Windows Phone was designed to run extremely fast and seamless in the regular interface even with lower hardware specification.

The WP’s interface is very simple to use and multitasking enabled by holding the back button, it will zoom out to a view of running apps in background and represented by a thumbnail.

The People and Messaging Hubs

Microsoft provide a robust social network integration (Facebook, Windows Live, Twitter & Xbox Live friends) in Windows Phone for ease of following them and stay connected all in one place. I can easily access to all of my friends’ updates, status, and photos. I can also post message/update/status on Facebook/Twitter/Live Messenger without running the applications. Chatting has made more easier with integration of Live Messenger and also Facebook Chat.

Internet Explorer

When it comes to the internet, the Nokia Lumia 800 is one of the fastest mobile internet experience with the uplifted IE9. Decent web experience and fast response in loading pages, as well video streaming.

Flash is not supported with IE9 thus it wouldn't able to load certain webpages that still embedded with flash. In fact Adobe has announced it's scrappping the system in favour for HTML5 which IE9 is supported.

Marketplace

This is the most asked question by my friends. To build a new ecosystem is not a week or a month work. Marketplace has been growing surpringly fast; the numbers of quality of apps are developed and more apps are coming to Marketplace

Apps & games

Most of the basic need of apps are pre-loaded which easy to understand and use. Example Alarm, Calculator, Calendar, Camera, Contact Transfer, Network Setup, Office and etc.

About Office, it provides access to mobile versions of OneNote, Word, Excel and PowerPoint capable of working with documents either on device storage or on SkyDrive/SharePoint and Office365 which is good for students and business-on-the-go.

On the games part, its linked between WP7 and Xbox Live that associated with your Xbox Live account. Unfortunately here in Malaysia we do not have Xbox and can't shout anything about this. We still can download premium games to play example Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, NFS, Splinter Cell, PVS and much more.

Nokia Maps & Nokia Drive

When it comes to maps, Nokia has been leading the pack. The Nokia Maps and Nokia Drive are the proprietary apps that only available out-of-box in Nokia Lumia. The speed of GPS lock and accuracy of location is superb, finding location within a couple of seconds. Voice turn-by-turn navigation in Nokia Drive made excellent navigation guidance.

Camera

A 8MP Carl Zeiss optics is placed at the rear of the Nokia Lumia 800. The 8MP f/2.2 camera with dual-LED flash are capable to record 720P HD video recording. A simple touch of the object on the screen or pressing the camera button it will focus and snap the picture.

Great UI on the Nokia Lumia 800 camera app that allow you have transition directly between the camera and captured shots and videos by swiping to the right. This actually cut the time to preview, retake, delete, share on Facebook, auto-fix and much more.

The image quality is quite good especially shooting in daylight. Sensitive White Balance and quick focus. Whereas in low light condition without flash, the photos can be quite noisy.

As for the video recording, it can't change zoom while recording which is sad to know. It struggle more to focus and sluggish in AWB adjustment in low light.

All these tests were running on the old firmware. Expecting improvement of the camera on the coming new firmware.

Battery

As mentioned previously, this is a review base on the old firmware. Currently a single full charge battery can last me about 6-8 hours. The battery life is not as good as I expected, probably caused by bad battery management. Hope the new firmware to fix this issue completely and do expected to double the battery life.


Like

• Love the simple design, unique shape, solid built, weight and good hand grip of the Nokia Lumia 800.
• Windows Phone 7.5 metro UI is very intuitive with impressive speed of response despite running on single core processor and 512MB of RAM.
• People Hub that linked everyone I know in one place allowed me to get connected with all my friend and family seamlessly.
• FREE Nokia Drive with voice navigation turn-by-turn

Dislike

• The AMOLED screen is vivid and bright but I do find is a little be over saturated.
• microUSB's lid cover is hard to open and may accidentally bend it.

• Bad battery life. Hopefully the new firmware update will resolve this.
• Major apps are there but would like to see more apps to come on this phone.

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