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Nokia Lumia 800 Smartphone Review

David Correll on May 25, 2012 | Nokia | Comments (3)

There has been much hype about the new Nokia Lumia series smartphone – if you are a Sydneysider you may have noticed a significant advertising campaign on at the moment promoting the new Nokia 710 and 800 models.

First I’ll give you some background on the Nokia Lumia 800. This is the first Nokia phone to run on the Windows Mobile Operating System. This phone is based on a similar design of the old Nokia N9.

I must admit – in the Cyan Blue the phone does feel very nice, and sexy. Yep sexy.

Like any modern smartphone, this device is jam packed with features.

What I really liked

People Hub is the OS integrated social media centre. If you like social media this phone has it integrated into the operating system! which makes chatting to your contacts second nature.

Specifically Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are the social networks in people hub. Keeping tabs on your Facebook friends has never been so easy.

In terms of internet capabilities the phone is HTML5 compatible and runs on Internet Explorer 9 (mobile edition). Bing Search is also integrated again directly into the OS which makes web searching fast and efficient.

In terms of the hardware capabilities – this phone has all the bells and whistles – 16GB memory, 512MB RAM, 1400 MHz on a Single CPU (Core) which allows for fast day to day phone usage and comparable if not faster in some cases to an iPhone 4.

For Business Users you will enjoy Microsoft Outlook Mobile Edition – possibly the best email software on a mobile device.

The phone also has access to the full suite of Microsoft Office applications, certainly giving it an edge over other smartphones for business use. Although I do admit scrolling through a long word document on a screen this size will always be a little tricky, no matter what device.

In terms of Map Features the phone comes with Nokia’s proprietary Nokia Maps with Turn-by-turn Navigation across 95 countries including Australia. This is a great add on feature considering the expensive costs of such applications on the iOS platform for example.

The camera is a 8PM Carl Zeiss rear facing unit with dual LED flash. There is no front facing camera on this phone but the ease of use and side photo button makes up for that.

To sync your content the Microsoft Zune software makes that easy. In fact the music functionality on this phone is top class and easy to use, also having an FM radio which many smart phone seem to lack these-days.

If you like your applications the Windows Marketplace is growing every day and many leading application developers are spending significant time on Windows Apps. In addition to this the Xbox Live integration will surely attract die hard gamers to consider the Lumia 800.

The Bad

There are only a couple issues I’ve noticed with the phone – sometimes the camera focus is not 100% clear. It seems other users have experienced this problem and apparently Nokia are working on a fix.

The Volume does seem rather soft – with the volume turn to full it’s about half the sound as an iPhone.

The max storage of 16GB may be limiting for some heavy users.

Battery Life can drain quickly under heavy use. I am not sure if this was from extensive testing during the review, but it seems other users have also had battery issues. A software update from Nokia reportedly fixes this problem.

Conclusion

In my opinion this is an extremely solid smartphone by Nokia and Microsoft. The Windows Mango operating system is easy to use, intuitive and actually fun to use. I could see myself using this as my main mobile phone especially with such high quality Outlook and Office integration.