Nokia Lumia 800

Nokia Lumia 800

Recently I had said that I bought the Motorola Razr, because it was a incredibly powerful phone in a tiny but rugged body. But a couple of weeks ago, while using the phone to navigate. It slipped out of my hands and fell on the hard paved ground. Initially it looked like it survived its ordeal by landing on its Kevlar lined back. Some scuffs were on the phone but were mainly negligible, but the real damage showed itself the the next day when I went to charge it. The phones internals were badly damaged, it would no longer take a charge.

Seeing that I had a ruined phone, and one which probably would not be covered by warranty, I went looking for a cheap replacement smartphone. What I came across was the best mobile phone which I had ever used. That is the Nokia lumia 800, it truly is amazing device, with its design coming from the gorgeous N9 and the operating system from Microsoft (aka windows phone 7.5 mango), it has the best of both worlds and is the only device other the Samsung galaxy s series which gives the iPhone a run for its money.  Speaking of money, the Nokia lumia 800 only costs $200, this was an incredible value compared to the iPhone (4, 4s) and the Samsung galaxy s range (1,&2), which can cost from $400 - 600. Specs wise the 900 is very modest, it has a single core 1.4 GHz Qualcomm snapdragon processor, a adreno 205 GPU and 512 MB of RAM. While this may seem very little when compared to the dual core processors and gigabytes of RAM found on android and IOS phones, due to windows phone being very resource efficient, this phone is snapper and smother than IOS and android jellybean. The screen on the 800 is a what Nokia call their Clear Black display, this means that there is a polarising filter on the top of the screen, increasing visibility in direct sunlight. The screen itself is a 3.7 inch AMOLED display with a resolution of 480 x 800 pixels (252 ppi). This screen is decent but is nowhere near the quality of the HD displays found on the Samsung galaxy 3 or the retina display on the iPhone, but for the price its very good, $200 phones still use hvga screens (320 x 480 pixels). 

Nokia Music launching

Under the deal with Microsoft, Nokia has the ability to change the interface of windows phone platform, but has instead decided to keep the system very stock. Nokia has instead made apps available for only its phones to overcome some of the shortfalls of windows phone and add extra features to windows phone to separate itself form the competition. These apps are Nokia Maps which is much better than Bing maps, Nokia drive which is a turn by turn GPS system, where maps and multiple voices can be stored offline and Nokia music which is a free music service, it is so good that I have stopped using Spotify and Rdio. By not skinning the platform like the android OEMs, Nokia has great easy to use device, with a clean and beautiful interface and with the inclusion of the Nokia specific apps the lumia 800 is a stand out device in the windows phone 7.5 range.

While this phone is great, it still has some drawbacks, the major one is the camera. The camera is a 8 megapixel, autofocus camera with Carl Zeiss Tessar lens. While sounding good on paper, images produced by it are soft and blurry. This particularly interesting as the N9 using the same camera module produces far betters shots, it seems like windows phone has still some kinks to sort out in its camera software. The other major drawbacks are the non removable battery, with a capacity of 1450 mAh, the battery only lasts a day under moderate usage and the lack of a forward facing camera, Nokia has had forward facing camera since the camera phone came out, this omission seems very out of place.  The other draw backs are mainly  nitpicks such as the flap covering the micro-usb port seems flimsy and the position of the power lock button is easily confused with the volume rocker. Potential buyers must also note that this phone will only be updated to windows phone 7.8, not Microsoft's new mobile operating system windows phone 8 also the phone has no expandable storage, though the internal storage of 16GB is sufficient with an extra 25GB free SkyDrive space.

Nokia Lumia 800 Right hand side

The Nokia lumia 800 is not a perfect device,  but it stands out due to its craftsman like finish, amazing build quality and a unique design found nowhere else. This phone is not for the people who want the latest and greatest, whether it be in terms of apps or hardware. This phone is for people who want to stand it from the crowd of iPhones and android phones, its for people who are looking for something different. As for Nokia who are trying to push this as the new begining for the company to save them from the "burning platform", this is as Nokia says a begining, it has the right stuff but its still just not there yet. But still is the best phone I have used to date and for the price this truly is an awesome phone.