After less than a year from the announcement of the collaboration, the Lumia 800, Nokia's first flagship Windows phone, is finally launched. Given the current market where dual-core performance Android/iOS phones are conquering the streets, will Lumia 800's single core smartphone able to win people over?
Unboxing
The Singapore variant of the Lumia 800 comes with the following items:
- Lumia 800 main unit
- Quick Start Guide, Warranty and stuff
- USB Power Charger
- USB data cable (doubles up as charging cable for the charger)
- Silicon Case
- Headset
Typical there is no difference in the packaging from N9 box except it is taller. This is due to the addition of the paper sleeve for the user manual and Quick Start Guide and silicon case. Not very environmental friendly though as I find the N9 box packaging is just fine.
Hardware
Basically the design is the same as N9 which is launched some time earlier. The unibody is made of color-injected polycarbonate material with gorilla glass assembled flushed with the bezel edge. It is the same AMOLED screen with Nokia's Clear Black technology and with zero air gap between the glass and touchscreen, the result is the clear and crisp display giving the user an impression that the icons "floats" on the glass.
Only difference from the N9 are:
- Addition of capacitive buttons below the screen
- Omission of front facing camera
- Addition of Hardware camera button
- Shifted position of the camera LEDs
The addition of hardware camera button and capacitive buttons are probably the requirements for Windows Phone so sacrifices to the display size is inevitable.
If you want to know more about the design, you can reference my review on the N9 design which covers most of the aspects.
If you really ask me, N9's design is more streamline. Despite that, Lumia 800 is still a pretty slick phone in terms of hardware design.
UI
Ok, the UI is the de-facto design from Windows Phone so nothing different visually as compared to other Windows Phones from other manufacturers. Only thing that Lumia 800 stands out from the rest of the WP is the Nokia-exclusive apps like Nokia Maps, Nokia Music, and Nokia Drive
In the world of dual-core powered smartphones, Lumia 800 tech specs definitely stands pale in comparison. Despite that, the UI running on the single core processor phone is amazingly smooth and virtually no lag at all. The screen responds to the user touch almost instantaneously and the transitions are very fluid. This could be due to the GUI hardware acceleration giving thread priority to UI. In the time of review I have shown to iPhone users and they were impressed by the fluidity of the UI as well.
Telephony and Productivity
Communication functionality in this phone is pretty easily accessible. You only need to tap on the phone tile, and the phone transits to the dialer, fluidly.
Calls are clear, no additional noise are heard and the other party has no complaint on the voice quality from this phone
Text messages works a bit different here. If you have logged into Facebook and MSN account, all incoming messages will be consolidated into one single contact thread. This means that if you have Peter in your facebook and MSN accounts, all his messages from MSN, SMS and Facebook will be seen in one conversation thread. I find it simply a cool implementation.
What I really like most is the Office app that is integrated with the system. I will say it is very well implemented. Using this phone at work during my review, syncing with my company's Exchange server is a breeze and in no time, all my contacts, calendars and emails are sync-ed. What is really impressive is the Outlook app, which is the best, aesthetically and functionality, based on my experience with various email apps on Android/Symbian OSes so far. You can check out the video on Outlook demo in my other post. All the edited documents can be saved and uploaded locally or to Skydrive, which is Microsoft's own cloud storage (which is linked to your Windows Live account). In my case, I was given 25GB for the storage. This could be one of the reasons why Lumia 800 only comes with 16GB local storage, as Microsoft and Nokia is trying to encourage the use of Skydrive for your media storage.
Software
In my previous post on Lumia 800 preview, it has been demonstrated all the different aspects of the software so I shall not repeat myself here. You can view the demo video here
In summary, the whole system is very People-centric, where the WP consolidate your contacts' social and telephony information into one single hub for your viewing. In this aspect I find that Android still need to catch up on this part, natively.
Camera
For the camera feature, it carries the same 8MP sensor as the N9 sibling but with hardware camera button.
Good thing about this is that I can activate the camera and snap away by just press and hold the camera key while the phone is locked. This is good when you need to take quick moments without fiddling through the UI for the camera app. +1 for this.
Another good thing is that the app comes with the auto-fix feature, which if you find the photos taken is under/over exposed, selecting the AUTO-FIX will enhance the photos. I have tried this on a couple of photos and I will say the feature is very much usable.
Here are some of the photos taken with Lumia 800. Frankly, not amazing, but good enough. One more thing, as with most smartphone cameras, taking photos in low light conditions with this phone is a nightmare. If you are some clubber who likes to take shots of sexily dressed chicks in clubs and discos, you are better off with a N8 ;)
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| Low Light Photo |
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| Sunny Shot |
GPS
One of the main selling point for Lumia 800 apart from the rest of the Windows Phones is the Nokia exclusive Nokia Maps and Nokia Drive. Nokia provides free GLOBAL turn-by-turn navigation and also maps. However there's a catch: you need to be connected to the internet, meaning you will need to have a mobile data plan to start the navigation feature. Quite a bummer if you don't have a mobile data plan in place but I found a way (cos the line I'm using have no mobile data plan either) to work around, which is to download the maps via Wifi first, then set my route for navigation but don't start the navigation first. Then start the navigation once you are outside and the navigation can run offline. Recent Drive updates has already implemented offline navigation.
Location locking is pretty fast, even without A-GPS. Relying on GPS chip triangulation takes about 5-8 minutes to lock from cold boot, which is considered pretty fast. Navigation is pretty spot on and the voice guidance comes in various Asian languages, including Cantonese. I wished there is a Hokkien language also.... oh well =/
My pet peeves....
Ok, the Lumia 800 is not all roses and peaches, it comes with some shortcomings as well. Well nothing is perfect, but still I will need to highlight what really puts me off on this phone:
- Quite a pain to create and add custom ringtones as there is a restriction on the size of the ringtone file. Also you will have to add to the music playlist with proper ID3 tag in Genre to be properly identified in the phone. Ringtone customisation has never gone tougher =/
- no way to use custom message/IM ringtones. In the age where Android phone has that flexibility, this can seriously hamper user experience (another customisation handicap)
- MS Office not able to edit document files older than office 2004 format (can only view)
- Need to use Zune for everything (trasnfer photos/videos, sync music files, adding custom ringtones). Very much like the other fruit phone.
- No Mass storage mode when connected to PC
- No OBEX support for bluetooth, seems like only for headsets.....very much similar to the fruit phone, makes it very difficult to share photos and audio files with friends.
- Using whatsapp is a freaking pain. Slow startup, frequent crashes. I know this is not Nokia's fault but as user who uses whatsapp for daily messaging, it's a real dealbreaker. Top it up with unavailability for alternative app like LINE or Viber, geez.....
- No Skype support...YET. Hopefully with the general popularity of Lumia 800, WP support for Skype will come soon.
- No Wifi hotspot feature. This means the phone cannot double as a wireless hotspot like iOS or Android. However, I believe this will be implemented in the future updates
- No USB OTG. I don't see this coming in future updates since there is no way to see the folder levels in the phone. Practically, you can only rely on Skydrive to park your files or to share them.
Conclusion
Having used various mobile OSes (Android/Symbian/Meego), here is my view:
If you are switching from iPhone, you will probably able to adapt to the Windows Phone ecosystem and UI pretty fast, with little learning curve. The system restrictions and sync method are pretty similar so it will be a welcoming fresh change for iPhone users who wants to try out something new.
However, if you come from Android system, there are 2 types of users:
1 - Normal Android users. They will probably able to accept the ecosystem of WP since they are those who just use the phone for social networking, phone call and texting most of the time. in fact, they may find WP is more integrated in terms of social media integration in the OS natively.
2 - Power Android users. They are the ones who like to screw around with the OS system level and do a lot of customisations to the look of the phone (since Android is highly customisable in terms of UI look), used to copy media files from PC using Mass Storage mode without any syncing software. And also those who frequently share media files via Bluetooth. These are the people that may or may not welcome WP's UI system and restrictions.
Lumia 800 is not a bad phone per se, but it will truly be a winner if it has been released earlier when Android has not matured to the Gingerbread status. For those who are considering this phone, hope this review will help you understand the pros and cons of the phone.