Jan 20 2012
Nokia Lumia 800 Review
Always keen to see the latest in technological developments, we were eager to get to grips with Nokia’s new Flagship Mobile SmartPhone, the Windows Phone powered Lumia 800, and fortunately we have the opportunity to put it through its paces on the Three mobile phone network for our Nokia Lumia 800 Review.
The Look and Feel of the phone
Nokia make nice looking hardware, it’s been their software that have been letting them down in recent years, and the Lumia 800 is a great looking device. Stylish sleek square edges with a rounded back makes the device feel comfortable in the hand and gives it the feel of a much smaller phone.
The Nokia Lumia has an 3.7 inch AMOLED capacitive touchscreen which runs at a resolution on 480 by 800 pixels. Whilst the resolution of the screen doesn’t match that of the iPhone’s retina display, the large screen is nice to look at and text is ready to read. The AMOLED display produces bright and vivid colours which help to bring out the best in photos and videos.
The lack of a dual core processor may lead some of you to expect the Lumia to run a little slowly but the complete opposite is true, as Windows Phone doesn’t have the processing overhead of Android and the Lumia 800 is quick, nimble and without any lag whatsoever. Apps load and operate very quickly, and media is handled well.
The Phone comes with 512 mb (The Windows Phone standard) and 16gb of on board storage space, unfortunately there is no way to add any additional storage space so if you take lots of Photos or record long videos then you will need to manage your storage space wisely, online Storage facilities like Microsoft’s SkyDrive may provide an solution.
Mobile Data Functionality
The Lumia 800 support 802.11b/g/n networks, and switchover between mobile data networks (eg 3G) and known WiFi networks is automated, transparent and seamless, a feature which doesn’t always work very well on some Android devices.
The Three network has come a long way in recent years, and wherever we tested the phone we got fast HSPDA data speeds, emails were transmitted quickly, video quality was good on Youtube; without significant buffering and Synchronisation between the device and Google Accounts were almost real time.
On Three’s One Plan Internet usage is unlimited, and this is when Smart Phones come into their own, if you find yourself away from your home Wifi network, you can send pictures, large emails, and upload videos quickly and without having to worry about extra data costs or data caps.
The Nokia’s Lumia 800 Camera
Nokia have become well known for the quality of the cameras on their Smart Phones, indeed they are probably considered to be the market leader for phone photography, and so the Lumia 800 has a great Legacy to live up to, and whilst it may not quite meet the ultra high standards of the Nokia N9, the Lumia 800 holds it’s own against most of the market.
The camera’s specifications would indicate that it’s a high end device featuring an 8 mega pixel sensor with Carl Zeiss optics and a dual LED flash to provide light in dark scenes, and the Lumia puts the hardware to good use.
To put the camera through it’s paces, we took several photographs in different lighting environments on the Nokia Lumia 800 and also took near identical photos on the Apple iPhone 4s, which has the reputation of having a good camera, to act as a base line.
The first set of example photographs that were taken were of a plastic plant in a tropical fish tank. The scene had strong over head lighting and because the photos were taken through glass it meant that a Flash could not be used.
Both Cameras took good Photographs. As you would expect, foreground detail was clear in both and neither showed any obvious signs of Blur. The photo taken on the iPhone perhaps shows a higher level of detail in background objects, but the colours are certainly brighter and more vivid on the Lumia. Which level of colour you prefer is up to you!
The second set of example photographs that were taken were of a planted tree at night with no light source – this put a real dependency on the flash. This is where the Nokia Lumia really produced a better image, whilst not a perfect image it’s still a good picture, and the flash did a good job of producing the right amount of light to the scene to enable good colour in the image. Whereas the photo taken by the iPhone was very washed out producing a very poor picture
Nokia Lumia 800 Example Photos - click to enlarge
iPhone 4s Example Photos - click to enlarge
The Lumia 800 is also able to record High Definition video, and although only at 720p resolution this means that you can capture reasonably good quality video whilst on the move. Certainly the quality of video is more then good enough for sharing on Youtube or burning to a DVD
Final Thoughts
The Nokia is a very nice smartphone, and with Windows Phone its ideal for the majority of Smart Phone users who want to communicate and Social Network but don’t need the additional features that a Power User requires.
The Lumia 800 represents a massive change of direction of Nokia, moving away from it’s traditional Symbian Operating system and it’s existing albeit shrinking user base, and over all it’s a very positive move. There are a few small hardware tweaks that could be made to appease power users, and Windows Phone is still a little way off maturity but for simple and integrated communication all packaged together in a great piece of hardware the Nokia 800 is difficult to beat.
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