::::REVIEW::::
What happens when you add a little Microsoft to the once world's largest mobile manufacturer? You get the Nokia Lumia line of smartphones. And the Lumia 800 is the first of them to show itself to the world. The 800 has been in the market for quite some time. Released in the 4th quarter of 2011, it has been selling across the world (not exactly, not in all regions) for over six months.
The Lumia 800 is a marvelous piece of work. The build, borrowed from its Meego running cousin, the N9, is fantastic. The polycarbonate unibody is a beauty. In the world of rectangular, similar looking droids, this dude does differentiate itself. Hardware-wise at least.
On the software side, this baby runs on WP7 with Mango update, aka WP7.5. There is hardly anything that Nokia could do to give it a stand-out personality. Microsoft demands that no hardware manufacturer can make any changes to the software, so that fragmentation, a major problem with Android could be avoided, and a uniform User Interface exists across devices of all manufacturers.
There have been recent announcements that current Windows Phone (WP7) devices will not get updated to Windows Phone 8. Instead they will be given all the visual and functional changes with Windows Phone 7.8. This definitely will be a cause for slowing down of sales for the Lumia line, and thereby Nokia devices as a whole.
Design:
Design has always been one of Nokia's greatest strengths. It never has been afraid to experiment with various form factors and come up with beautiful designs. The body of the 800, actually borrowed from the N9, is one such design. It stands out in a crowd. It is unique, distinctive, appealing.
Calling it a cousin of the N9 would not be fair. It is a twin. Both the phones have the same dimensions, 116.5 mm tall, 61 mm wide and 12 mm thick. Even though not too hefty, the 800 weighs a good 142 grams.
The polycarbonate body looks strong and attractive. Though we have not tested it, the plastic itself is coloured, as opposed to painted. Scratching or dinting the body will not reveal a inner body of another colour, so no fear in letting your phone fall down once or twice.
The 3.7 inch screen covers a good portion of the front, as with any touch phone. The screen is protected by gorilla glass layer to prevent the LED screen from getting scratched. Below the screen are the trio of capacitative keys: back key, Windows key and search key.
At the rear is the 8 mpix snapper, which takes some quality snaps.
On the right side, as expected, lies the lock key. The volume rocker is placed a few centimeters above the lock key. Towards the bottom is the two stage camera key
Display:
The screen is a 3.7 inch, AMOLED display with WVGA resolution. ie., 480 by 800 pixels. The pixel density is 250 pixels per inch, which seems reasonable enough for an upper mid end smartphone.
As with many other mid end smartphones employing the LED technology, the display has pentile matrix arrangement of pixels. A pentile display has RGBG arrangement of pixels, contrasted to the traditional style RGBRGB. This reduces the total number of subpixels by a factor of one third. The screen is still impressive, great colours and viewing angles. The sunlight performance is excellent thanks to Nokia's Clear Back Display technology, which minimizes reflections using polarization layer. The display remains perfectly visible even in the brightest sunlight.
The WP UI:
The Windows Phone User Interface is virtually the same on all WP devices. Expect no change with the 800. It uses the WP standard Metro UI without any real changes.
Pressing the lock key brings up the lockscreen, which shows the time, date, events and notifications(msgs, missed calls). To unlock the device, you have to push the lockscreen up. It brings the Start Screen to the view.
The Start screen comprises of live tiles. The tiles are arranged in a vertical grid. Each live tile shows some info about something. All the important notifications and details/news/social updates are made available at the Start screen by these tiles. There can be unlimited number of tiles in the Start page and you can add as many tiles as you want. A tile can be allocated to a person, and some apps also provide tiles for quick access.
Pressing the windows key, or swiping from right to left on the tiles UI, brings up the application list. It is a vertical list of apps arranged in alphabetical order. He vertical list may be slightly inconvenient for an iPhone user or Android user accustomed to pagewise layout of apps. But getting used to it is not hard. An app can be 'pinned' to the start screen by press-holding it, and clicking 'pin to start menu'. There is an option to search for an app within the list, accessed by pressing the search key below the screen or the on-screen search icon. The keyboard pops up and inputting a few letters is enough to get the app.
WP Mango supports rudimentary multitasking, apps in the background are suspended. They are frozen, to say. Switching between the apps is achieved by press holding the 'back' key. This brings up the task switcher, which is a horizontally swipe able list of screenshots of the frozen apps. There is absolutely no way of ending an app other than opening new apps which force the older apps to close. Apps that require to be active even in background, say a download or music streaming, are allowed to do so using 'live agents' hence no worry of your downloads getting stopped when you play a game..
The whole UI is smooth, fluid and quick. Pretty transitions and animations make navigating through the phone a very nice and pleasant experience.
Core Apps:
All basic functions of a phone are well covered. There is the People Hub shows all the contacts you have. Phone numbers, email contacts, social network friends. Contacts are arranged alphabetically, as it is expected. There is a facility to search a contact too.
Swiping across brings the next tab. What's new. It brings all the latest news from your social networks. Still another tab is 'Recent Contacts', which is a list of recently contacted people.
There is a Me card from which you can set your FB status and so on..
The dialer app is simple and easy to use, but lacks smart dialing. There are only call and save options in the dialer.
An incoming call shows a photo screen, sliding which reveals the answer key.
Messaging is handled by a hub of its own. It integrates text msgs, instant msgs, social msgs within the same hub. The whole setup is simple and quite easy to use. Needless to say, threaded conversation is the way to go, and it is implemented well. Swiping opens the 'online' tab showing your social contacts who are online.
Camera:
The 8 mpix camera on the phone shoots in two ways, 4:3 and 16:9. The camera has autofocus, f/2.2 camera lens, and most of all Carl Zeiss branding as with most above mid end Nokia cameraphones. The unit is the same as the one in N9.
Specs aside, the snapper does a good job in taking good pics. Pics are good enough for most purposes. Not upto the N8 or iPhone standards, but better than most of the phones out there.
WP does not support full HD (1080p) video recording. Naturally neither does this Lumia. It does shoot 720p vedios at 30 frames per second, and the quality is stunning. The audio quality is not the best around, but still appreciable.
Final Words:
The Nokia Lumia 800 is not the ultimate smartphone. Nokia still has work to do. A lot of work. Its bigger brother, the 900 betters it with a larger screen and non pentile display. But otherwise it is one and the same.
The 800 definitely is not getting updated WP8. Instead it will be given some of the cool features from it in the form of WP 7.8, like the updated homescreen with resizable tiles. This may be a consolation for current 800 owners.
Competing droids at this price range have better features like dual core processors. But the software is so fast and optimized on the single core that it feels faster and smoother than most dual core competitors out there, save the iPhone 4s.
If you ask me, is this phone worth buying, spending your money on, there can be no definite answer. It is a good phone, will cater to all your needs. The Windows Marketplace is growing fast and there are apps for anything you would want. But the fact that WP8 will be coming soon and your new 800 won't be getting it is quite saddening. As a phone, and as of now, the 800 is a very good smartphone. If you very urgently need a smartphone, and a good one with good software support, then 800 is the way to go.