Announced at Nokia World 2011 on October 26 the Nokia Lumia 800 is the company’s first smartphone running Windows Phone 7.5 Mango. It denoted the turn the company made from previously used operating systems – Symbian and MeeGo. The phone was officially launched in the UK on November 16, and is reported to be available also in the US, though not officially announced. Nokia has stated this was their “best launch ever.”
Nokia Lumia 800 Design
Nokia keeps traditions in letting users see where the screen ends on the phone, that is the screen does not occupy all the front space, but stops a little before the edges thus creating beautiful margins clearly discernible in non-black models. The Nokia Lumia 800 is made from a single piece of polycarbonate and is available in black, pink and cyan colors. The phone comes with dimensions of 116.5×61.2×12.1mm and weighs only 142 g. The corners of the phone are markedly pointed, which makes it very handy, but if you are a fan of roundish phones, this can be uncomfortable for you. On the top you can find the headset jack and hidden microUSB and microSIM card slots, which are a little hard to open. The tradition lovers would find on the back a big metallic oval segment with the camera eye, Nokia and Carl Zeiss brands on it. Right upwards to it there is a smaller oval segment with the flash. On the right there are chrome buttons for volume, power and camera.
Nokia Lumia 800 Display
The Lumia 800 boasts of a 3.7-inch AMOLED capacitive curved glass display powered with Gorilla Glass and Clear Black Display technologies. The first one does not let the display be scratched, and the latter allows users to see the texts and pictures with the same quality under the sunlight. Moreover, the screen can be Swype-ed and supports multi-touch input. Its resolution is 480×800 pixels and it supports 16 million colors.
Nokia Lumia 800 Hardware
The Nokia Lumia 800 is quite powerful, when it comes to hardware. The phone is packed with a 1.4 GHz Scorpion processor with Adreno 205 GPU meaning we are dealing with a high-speed CPU. This processor is in a good collaboration with 16GB of internal memory and 512MB of RAM. The memory can’t be expanded, because Microsoft has its limitation on this. The device comes with a 1450mAh battery and from a single charge it will provide 9.5 hours of talk mode, 7 hours playback, 55 hours music playback and 335 hours standby time. As for connectivity, it is a “beast.”
Connectivity specs:
- WEP
- WPA
- 802.11b/g/n
- WPA2-Personal
- WPA-Enterprise
1. Data synchronization
- ActiveSync
- Microsoft Zune for PC and Mac Connector Software
2. Local connectivity
- WiFi
- Micro USB
- Bluetooth 2.1 +EDR
- USB 2.0 High-Speed
- 3.5mm AHJ Connector
- Bluetooth Stereo Audio
Nokia Lumia 800 Camera
The handset is equipped with an 8MP camera from Carl Zeiss Optics, an autofocus, a dual-LED flash and is able to record HD videos at 720p and 30fps. There is no front-facing camera; it’s not Nokia’s fault, but Microsoft’s. Unfortunately, the phone lacks zooming option, which is not that good. You can make nice videos during the day, but the camera seems to be a bit slow to respond to the sudden brightness change and the focal range is poor. In low light condition, the Lumia 800 gets more nervous to focus, but the dual LED flash can be turned on permanently while videoing and enabling focus and color settings to achieve closer to daylight quality.
Nokia Lumia 800 sample photos
Nokia Lumia 800 sample video
Software
The Lumia 800 runs Windows Phone 7.5 Mango, which provides an ultra-simple exploitation experience. The WP7 enables you to run several applications in the background, but only selected apps can do so, while the rest are just disabled (suspended). There are a couple of exclusive applications installed, including Nokia Drive, Nokia Maps, Nokia Music, App Highlights and Contacts Transfer app, which lets you quickly transfer contacts from your old phone. Add to it such indispensable tools as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, email, Chat and SMS. The Symbian users were already accustomed to Nokia’s profile situations like General, Silent, Meeting, Outdoor, Pager and Offline, but they all disappeared on the Lumia 800, except for the Flight Mode and putting the phone only into vibrate mode. Many people were viewing these profile options as redundant, but just now their presence could be very handy considering the currently abound development of location and time based auto profile switching applications. As to closing applications, the previous Symbian experience of hitting the back physical button is gone, but it is done through the screen back button.
Nokia drive
For drivers, there is a very useful Nokia Drive navigation application, which is very similar to Google’s Maps or TomTom. This can display the map of your position, the directions to drive, the car’s speed and the distance to your destination. It supports 2D and 3D maps, a night mode and satellite view, you can download (via WiFI) maps from over 100 country locations and it shows the distance to be covered.
Nokia Music
Nokia Music opens to show the number of tracks saved on the phone. A quick tap then opens an A-Z list showing Artist, Album, Song, Genre or Playlist.
A swipe to the left from the main Nokia Music screen takes to the Mix Radio, which is a streaming service transmitted through the data connection. The playlists are refreshed each week and there’s a choice of genres to pick from. The Mp3 Store is accessible with another swipe, and one more swipe will give you information on local gigs with prices and other info. It is a standard FM radio, requiring the headphones to act as an antenna to connect to the station. There is also the Marketplace, which provides access to purchase additional music for your personal collection from the Microsoft store.
Nokia Lumia 800 Unboxing
So you have bought the smartphone and now it is time to extricate it from its box, which is pretty attractive and implies there is a high-end device inside. Apart from the phone itself, there is a rather impressive pack of manuals in different languages, and this is not surprising remembering this device has quite different specs compared to Nokia’s previous handset both on technical and operational side. Then there are the charger, the USB cable and a headset. Nicely enough, there is a casing to be found inside just like it was in case of the Nokia N9, which makes protecting the phone from scratches possible right from the unboxing stage. It fits perfectly and smoothly and makes noticing there is a case virtually impossible.
Conclusion
The Nokia Lumia 800 is a new generation high-end smartphone and an amazing thing to own, to feel and to want. It can inspire to new levels and dimensions of experience and experimentation. Judging by the reactions coming from the countries where it is officially available we can deduce it gets and will continue to get very good reception among general public and it seems irrespective of where it is. This of course comes as a disappointment to those, who think the Finnish company is dead, and cannot compete with its main competitors , but again, factual responses prove this is just an illusion and has nothing to do with reality. One of the main advantages this smartphone has is it is very simple to use; it just speaks to you, it responds to your demands very smoothly.
