A Closer Look At Nokia Lumia 800

Sunday 18 March 2012 @ 4:39 am

Nokia launched two of its latest Nokia Lumia phones, Nokia Lumia 800 & Nokia Lumia 710, in Malaysia early February this year. They created a buzz in the mobile phone industry in Malaysia as the consumers here are relatively new to Windows Phone platform. Many people are curious to find out what Nokia Lumia phones have to offer.

I did an unboxing video with a brief introduction to Nokia Lumia 800 a few days ago. Check it out to see what we’ll get in the package.

Below are the key features of Nokia Lumia 800 that worth mentioning.

Design & Ergonomics

Nokia Lumia 800 runs on Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) OS but on the exterior it looks very much the same with the MeeGo-powered Nokia N9 which has one-piece polycarbonate body too. The phone is nice to grip because of its durable and slip-resistant polycarbonate material. Nokia Lumia 800 is currently available in 3 lovely colours (Black, Cyan & Magenta) at the moment while the white one will join the family later this year.

Nokia Lumia 800

The curved 3.7″ AMOLED ClearBlack display seamlessly integrated into the body and it’s protected by the tough Corning Gorilla Glass. Basically, ClearBlack display reduces reflections on the screen and improve visual image quality, especially when we are at outdoor.

Windows Phone 7.5 OS

It’s right to say Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) is the soul of Nokia Lumia 800 because it’s this OS that makes the phone stands out in the competitive smartphone market. Windows Phone 7.5 is very easy to use and a lot of useful features are packed in the OS, such as Live Tiles, People Hub, Bing Search, SkyDrive, Microsoft Office, Xbox LIVE, etc.

Metro style live tiles
Metro style live tiles

Metro style live tiles on the main screen allow us to customize how our home screen should look. These live tiles animate and show real-time updates, thus making the home screen “alive”. Swiping from right to left on the home screen will bring up the menu listing all installed application in alphabetical order.

Application Menu
Application Menu

When we sign up for a Windows Live’s account, it comes together with a free 25GB SkyDrive cloud storage account. SkyDrive is seamlessly integrated into Windows Phone 7.5 which we can use it to store photos, videos and documents.

The 1.4Ghz single core CPU in Nokia Lumia 800 may sound like an outdated specification for smartphone but in fact it’s good enough for the lean Windows Phone 7.5 to run smoothly and it doesn’t heat up easily as compared to other multi-core smartphones. Not to mention Nokia Lumia 800 only takes less than 20 seconds to boot up. Besides, multitasking is an essential feature in Windows Phone and it makes switching between application easy and quick.

People Hub & Social Network Integration

One of the attractive selling points I found in Nokia Lumia 800 is the rich integration of social networks. Services like Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, Windows Live, Google are integrated into People Hub. People Hub displays all updates from these connected social networks, making it the place where we can always get connected with our friends and family members.

People Hub

Facebook Chat is integrated into the Messaging feature in Windows Phone 7.5 too. Therefore with People Hub, there’s no need of any 3rd party application for us to stay connected in the above mentioned social networks.

Bing Search – More Than Just A Search Engine

Bing Search is not just a simple search engine and it’s in fact one of my favourite features in Windows Phone 7.5. There are 4 very useful functions for our daily use :-

  • Local Scout – help us find nearby restaurants, shops, and things to do based on our location.
  • Music Search – works like Shazam (a popular music identification service), help us find a song by letting the phone “listen” to the music.
  • Vision – point the phone camera at a barcode, UPC code, QR code or MS Tag then Bing will return the result of these codes. Besides, book, movie, and album covers are recognized too! Text translation works like a charm as well, just select Scan Text and hit Translate then the wordings in the picture will be translated on the fly.
  • Voice Recognition – Bing search understands our speech and translate it into search query. Things we can do with Voice are making a search using voice, compose a SMS, making a call, open an application, etc. It works similar as Siri on Apple iPhone.
Bing Search
Bing Search

Voice Recognition
Voice Recognition

Microsoft Office Support

Well, of course reading, creating and editing Microsoft Office documents are natively supported on Windows Phone 7.5! Word, Excel & PowerPoint document files as well as OneNote are recognized without the need of any 3rd party application.

Microsoft Office

Documents saved in SkyDrive, Office 365, SharePoint and inside the phone can be accessed from the Office app so we can read or edit them on the go as long as we are connected to the Internet.

Xbox LIVE

If you are a Xbox 360 gamer, you are going to like the Xbox Live integration in Windows Phone 7.5. Xbox LIVE helps us keep in touch with friends and family in exciting new ways like sharing game scores and achievements. Multiplayer game request can be made from within Xbox LIVE too.

Xbox LIVE
Xbox LIVE

Xbox LIVE Avatar
Xbox LIVE Avatar

Nokia Exclusive Applications

Out of the box, Nokia Lumia 800 comes pre-installed with some Nokia exclusive applications such as :-

  • Nokia Drive – turn-by-turn GPS navigation with voice guidance, optimized for driving.
  • Nokia Maps – full featured maps navigation with local POI, pin destination, etc.
Nokia Drive
Nokia Drive

Nokia Maps
Nokia Maps

These are the 2 must-have applications on all Nokia devices regardless of the Operating System. I’m so glad to see Nokia Maps ported to Windows Phone. In fact, Nokia Drive is always my first choice for turn-by-turn GPS navigation and no other free GPS application comes close to it in term of accuracy and user friendliness.

More Nokia exclusive applications, such as Nokia Music, ESPN, CNN, App Highlights, are available for free in Marketplace under Nokia Collection. Some application in Nokia Collection may not be available in certain countries though.

Marketplace

The Marketplace of Windows Phone may not be as big as Apple App Store or Google Play Shop (previously named Android Marketplace), but the amount of available applications is rising quick. Many apps are totally free, others let us try before we buy it. Applications, games and songs are all available in Marketplace.

MarketPlace

Some popular iOS and Android applications (Dropbox, Waze, etc) are still missing from Windows Phone Marketplace, same goes to famous games (Cut The Rope, Where’s My Water, Asphalt 6, etc). I’m sure Windows Phone users will be in joy when more of these applications and games hit the Marketplace.

My opinion on Nokia Lumia 800

It’s fair for me to say Nokia Lumia 800 is a build of good quality hardware compliment with an operating system that has many important features integrated into it. Windows Phone 7.5 is running very smoothly and is very responsive on Nokia Lumia 800 despite of its single-core processor and 512MB RAM.

There are some areas in Windows Phone 7.5 that need to be improved such as the lack of taskbar where we can quickly toggle WiFi, Bluetooth, Brightness, etc. A simple screenshot functionality should have been made available out of the box too.

I always stress that there’s no perfect phone, we can only find a phone that is perfect for us. Apart from the little downside in Windows Phone 7.5, I think People Hub, Bing Search, SkyDrive, Microsoft Office support, Xbox LIVE and Nokia exclusive applications differentiate Nokia Lumia 800 from other top of the line smartphones that are selling above RM2,000 in Malaysia. Therefore, Nokia Lumia 800 looks to be a good bargain selling at the RRP of RM1,650. More information regarding Nokia Lumia 800 at Nokia Malaysia website.

To view pictures at higher resolution, kindly please visit my Nokia Lumia 800 photo album.


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3 Responses to 'A Closer Look At Nokia Lumia 800'

  1. Magento Development India - March 29th, 2012 at 10:56 am

    Nokia Lumia 800 is really amazingly featured made mobile. I really glad to used that features.

  2. Admin - April 7th, 2012 at 5:52 am

    I purchased the Lumia 800 as a replacement for a dead HD7. I was honestly just about done with the Windows Mobile platform due to the poor experience I had with the HTC. I’m really glad I pulled the trigger on this phone.

  3. kismaytami - May 2nd, 2012 at 10:21 am

    There should be an update to disable the Bing button. Sometimes it is just annoying.

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