Now that I’ve gotten to play with the Lumia 800 for a few weeks, I think I’m qualified to make a few observations on not only the hardware itself but also Windows Phone 7 as a platform. Let’s talk about the hardware itself first, though.
When you open the box of your Lumia 800, sitting right on top is your device and when you take it in the hand for the first time, you’ll notice that while it isn’t made of aluminum, it most certainly isn’t cheap plastic. I’ve never been disappointed by Nokia hardware when it comes to build quality and they certainly didn’t just design any piece of trash when they made this device. The case is a single piece of polycarbonate and this is an excellent material to make a phone from: if you scratch it, it doesn’t matter because the dye itself is a part of the plastic and not just sprayed on. The material also gives the phone that same feeling you get with the soft-touch rubber that you find on the backs of other phones and on some laptops. In the box you’ll also find a rubber sleeve for the phone in case you want a case. The screen is Gorilla Glass, so don’t ever worry about getting scratches in the display. I never used the case myself, but it’s nice to see Nokia put one in there for those that wanted one. Considering that WP7 itself is still very new and Nokia controls only but a fraction of the smart phone space, you likely won’t be finding much in the way of accessories any time soon, anyway. You also get a set of headphones (seriously, though, Nokia, no in-ear headphones in 2012?), a USB cable and a USB-to-AC adapter.
Looking at the top of the phone you have a headphone jack and two doors that can be opened: one for the USB jack and the other for the micro-SIM card. Along the right side you have four buttons that control volume, lock and turn the phone on and a shutter button for the camera. I’m not too crazy about the power/lock button because I found myself pressing it all the time in my pocket by accident. Nokia did a sliding switch on the C6 (Symbian) that I won from A1 a while ago and it was really nice. It’s not that much of a gripe, though, but it’s just a little niggle. I’m not too crazy about the power/lock button on my LG Optimus 3D or my girlfriend’s Nexus S, so clearly I’m a bit picky and hard to please here. Aside from the two doors and the four buttons, that’s all you get in terms of the case.
Once you turn the phone on you’ll be prompted to select your language and locale settings, put in your Windows Live ID if you have one and also create a Nokia ID (if you don’t already have one). The phone is a really snappy piece of kit – the only time I experienced any lag was when using apps downloaded from the Marketplace and after talking to a developer on Twitter for one of those apps, he/she said it was due to the lack of optimizations for Mango for his app (and I’m assuming this carries over to other apps). The home screen has all the basics already set up and ready to go, just put in your email information and you’re good to go.
Next I’d like to talk about the software. Nokia delivers the phone with a few of their own applications that really should be included on all WP7 devices, but this device isn’t only the WP7 flagship for Nokia but in my opinion the flagship for all WP7 phones.
I’m entirely new to the WP7 environment, though, so take that last statement with a grain of salt. I’ve admittedly never used a WP7 phone before at any length; I’ve only watched others use them and played with the offerings from Samsung and HTC in stores. The interface itself is very natural to use and in my opinion, the easiest of any other smartphone. Android does have a certain amount of complexity to it that has become easier with 4.0 and iOS is also extremely simple but it doesn’t have the natural flow that WP7 offers.
Since the OS itself is still very new, it’s lacking a great deal in terms of what applications are available for download. There is still a large amount of them in the Marketplace, but when the majority of applications only have a few reviews to each one, it’s evidently apparent that WP7 has not reached the market share that Android or iOS have. I remember this when I first bought my HTC Magic back in 2009 but the offerings will grow as the user base grows. Microsoft has also been very aggressive in bringing developers into the fold and this partnership with Nokia will only help them grow their market share. It is a bit strange that there is no Skype application for WP7 given that Skype now belongs to Microsoft, but apparently this will be changing soon (and Skype will also have deeper integration with the OS itself in the future).
The notification system is very different here in comparison to Android or iOS, however. Push notifications for apps are still a new feature that hasn’t been fully integrated in all apps apparently (correct me if I’m wrong); the official Twitter app doesn’t even have push notifications enabled. A lot of apps seem to show notifications by just popping up a little icon on the lock screen (the top bar of the display remains almost exclusively black when using the phone, presenting the user with zero information and this took quite a bit of getting used to) and/or taking advantage of the live tiles to show you that something new had arrived. The live tiles are really one of the shining features of the OS, just like Android’s widgets. I would say that it’s probably just as good as push notifications, so long as you have a tile attached to the start screen, otherwise a push notification would be nice. The OS is new, though, so who knows what we’ll see, especially once the next generation Apollo is released later this year.
All in all, the phone is a tight little package. If you’d like to see photo quality and perhaps get some more technical details, there are plenty of other reviews out there. In my next blog entry I’m going to talk about the migration from Android to Windows Phone. It’s not as seamless as I was led to believe and left me with quite a few head scratchers.
I’d like to end the blog with a few thank yous: Fabian Lebersorger from Grayling, for getting in touch with me and inviting me to the Nokia World Vienna press event;Stephanie Urbanski from Nokia for answering all my questions at the event and making sure along with Fabian that I got a test device; the person running theRowi Twitter account for explaining a few things to me about WP7 (this was also my favorite Twitter app for WP7 – it’s a bit rough around the edges but apparently a large update is coming soon that will add a ton of features that other clients already have and some that others don’t, be sure to check it out and buy the pro version).
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