Nokia Lumia 800 is a touch screen smart phone running on the Windows Phone Mango platform.
At a glance, this latest installment of Lumia series looks brilliantly designed and comes with its own identity than other general touch screen phones around the market, that mostly look similar with iPhone, say, LG Optimus. But, in my opinion, despite the fact that this phone is a Windows Phone-based smart phone, actually, Nokia Lumia 800 also wants to copycat iPhone in the whole aspect. You don’t believe me? Well, just read on.
- Type: Nokia Lumia 800
- Release Date: 2011, November
- Price Purchased: $453
- Vendor: Nokia
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Phone Specs: MicroSIM card only, AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, 3.7 inches, 16M colors, 480 x 800 pixels, Windows Phone 7.5 Mango, 1.4 GHz Scorpion, 16 GB storage, Wi-Fi, 8 MP Camera + autofocus and dual-LED flash, See Full specs.
- Pros
- User Interface looks interesting with square boxes around dark background | Sound quality is top notch | Windows Phone Manggo OS is a great new taste for nowadays’ smart phones
- Cons
- Bluetooth is provided, but it cannot send files with other devices | To synchronize your phone, you need the software called Zune (just like iTunes on iPhone) | This phone only accepts micro SIM card | No external memory slot, only 16GB internal storage | No Java support
- Bottomline
- Bottom line, the powerful 8MP camera and great sound quality are 2 of many great things you can get from this phone. The injection of Windows Phone Mango and the support of tough 1.4 GHz processor also help a lot in bringing fast performance to this phone and fluid experience to the users. Definitely, great choice of touch screen smart phone.
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| It looks gorgeous on every angle |
Between Nokia Lumia 800 and iPhone
Just like in the older generations of iPhones, deliberately, Apple always puts limitations of capability on the previous series of iPhone and then makes it up in the next series again and again. For example is the Bluetooth feature. On the older generation of iPhone, Bluetooth on iPhone somehow cannot be used to transfer data or files with other devices except by downloading the 3rd party application.
And the second example is of course multitasking. It is really weird that smart phone wants to be called as a "smart phone" but it doesn’t have the capability to do multitasking, I think it's just ridiculous. Believe it or not, that is iPhone. And Apple always does this strategy on its iPhone over and over again in order to keep users to upgrade their iPhones to the newest ones.
This is plain ridiculous to me but somehow it’s ridiculously worked like a charm. And apparently, Nokia also wants to implement the same strategy of Apple on this latest series of Nokia Lumia 800, maybe, in order to achieve the same success like Apple.
For example is If on the older generation of iPhone, the Bluetooth cannot be used to transfer data or files with other devices, then it goes the same with Nokia Lumia 800. And then, if on iPhone, there is the one called App Store, the place where you can download free or paid applications and games for your iPhone (which is the most popular application store in the world and it’s now celebrating its 25 billion downloads worldwide), then on this Nokia Lumia 800, you will meet the one called App Highlights, the market place for Nokia applications.
And then again, if on older generations of iPhone, Apple were always strict when it comes to using an attractive background/theme/wallpaper on the Homescreen, then Nokia Lumia 800 also has the dark interface on the Homescreen.
Fortunately, if on the older iPhones, there was no multitasking, then Nokia doesn’t want to jump in the same hole as iPhone did. Yes, Nokia Lumia 800 has a multitasking functionality. And last but not least, if the battery of iPhone cannot be removed because it’s integrated with the cable inside the device. It goes the same with Nokia Lumia 800. You cannot plug off the battery.
Design
Talking about the design of this phone, Nokia Lumia 800 looks brilliantly designed in the square form without the use of any unnecessary element on the whole side, which makes it look really classy and professional. Although by judging the whole design of this phone, Nokia Lumia 800 looks want to target professional career users, it doesn’t mean that this phone is not a great smart phone for multimedia purpose. In fact, it’s still great as multimedia or music phone.
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| Do they look like DVD boxes? |
If on the iPhone, you only get 1 physical button on the front side of device, then on this Nokia Lumia 800, 3 main keys will be given to you. Seeing how these 3 buttons are designed in one similar interface with the dark black screen really makes this phone pleasing to see. The other thing that makes this phone look classy is the case cover of Nokia Lumia 800 that is designed without any opening case. The screen looks united with the 3 buttons and the whole case cover. Nokia really did a great job with this design aspect. It’s really brilliant.
On the right side of this phone, you will find the screen unlock button, the camera button and volume buttons. While the USB port, micro SIM slot and 3.5 mm head phone jack can be found on the top side.
Interface and Functionality
The screen of this phone is capacitive touch screen wrapped up with Gorilla glass protection, which makes it convenient to stare even under the sun light and it’s also resistant to hand scratches.
With the resolution of 480x800 pixels and the support of 16 million colors, the display of this phone is really sharp and bright in front of our eyes.
There is nothing special with the interface of this phone. Compared to Android phones, which have a really attractive and intuitive user interface, say, TimeScape on Sony Ericsson Xperia series or Touch Wiz on Samsung Galaxy series, the homescreen of this phone with its light blue box around the dark black background looks really flat and could be really boring in the further uses.
On the homescreen, the applications and features on this phone are presented with boxes in light blue color. All the boxes on the homescreen contain some specific applications that have been installed on this phone and can be opened with the touch of your fingers. I know the interface of this phone looks really boring to see, but somehow, the dark black background really gives a great contrast impression to those light blue boxes.
Performance
As I mentioned earlier, Nokia Lumia 800 comes with the Windows Phone Mango operating system and also powered by 1.4 GHz Qualcomm processor. Performance of this smart phone is guaranteed fast and fluid especially when the 1.4 GHz processor is still higher than major touch screen phones around the market to date, which mostly are still using 1 GHz processor.
And since we all know that Nokia has already implemented multitasking function on all of its cell phones, including Symbian and Java-based cell phones in the past. So practically, the multitasking function on this phone works great and doesn’t cause any significant impact to the whole performance of the phone.
Office Document Viewer Application
The injection of the full version of Microsoft Office applications on this phone can be really helpful for office people who always need the pocket device to be able to manage their office work while on the go. While the Skydrive feature will also be the other complement for Microsoft Office applications for office work purposes.
Email
Sending and receiving email from work colleagues or friends with this phone will be pleasing because all the emails will be arranged in a tidy list based on the same subject.
Market Place for Applications
Nokia used to have the market place for its Symbian-based applications and games, and it was called Ovi Store. And now, on this Nokia Lumia 800, you don’t need to go to Ovi Store anymore. Why? Well, of course, it’s because first, Windows Phone Mango apps are not sold there. Instead, Nokia has provided the other market place for your phone called App Highlights. Oops, it kind of reminds me with the one called App Store from Apple.
Connectivity
Just like other touch screen smart phones around the market, surfing internet with this phone is a great experience because it has been equipped with 3G and WiFi connection.
Synchronization Software called Zune
If on iPhone, you are already familiar with the use of iTunes, the software from Apple that enables you to synchronize your iPhone with the PC and also to download many applications and games from App Store. Then, on Nokia Lumia 800, you will also need the software that works exactly the same like iTunes, and it’s called Zune (which can be downloaded here).
Multimedia and Entertainment
Although based on the design, this phone looks far from the impression of being a fun cell phone, as a matter of fact, this phone is still great in offering multimedia features and especially music capability to the users.
Well actually, listening music with this phone is a really pleasing thing to do. The sound quality of this phone is really great. The audio from this phone comes out perfectly. The beats from the instrument sound really clear. And the bass frequency is just perfect.
Although this phone doesn’t provide sound equalizer, it doesn’t really give impact to the whole sound quality of this phone. Listening your favorite songs at the lowest or highest volume bar, the sound quality is still consistently clear and doesn’t sound shrill in our ears. Nokia Lumia 800 is a solid build music smart phone.
FM radio can be found on this phone. Unfortunately, there is no automatic searching for radio stations. So you must firstly find and bookmark your favorite radio stations manually.
Camera
Camera also becomes the best feature that gets the best treatment from Nokia. The 8MP camera with the support of Carl Zeiss optics is a really solid built camera. With the support of LED flash, snapping photos in the darker area can still produce good quality photos. The other great feature for its camera is called Auto-Fix. This Auto-Fix feature enables this phone to automatically adjust and fix the photo quality at the same time when the picture is taken.
Unfortunately, despite its high quality camera, the colors that are taken in the photo don’t look natural enough and each color in the photo looks different with the color of the real objects. However, the photo quality is still above the standard.
Conclusion
Bottom line, by looking at the whole aspect, capability, all features and especially the limitations that come with this phone, also based on the design and its simple user interface, then it looks clearly that Nokia Lumia 800 wants to follow the strategies that have been implemented by Apple on its iPhone.
Either from the App Highlights that follows App Store (that recently wants to celebrate its 25 billion downloads worldwide), the simple black user interface, the use of software called Zune that also follows Apple’s iTunes, the inability of iPhone Bluetooth to send data and files to other cell phones can also be found on Nokia Lumia 800. Yup, Nokia Lumia 800 wants to copycat iPhone for sure.
Something that makes Nokia Lumia 800 different with iPhone is of course its operating system, the Windows Phone Mango OS, as the platform to run the whole features and applications.
However, what makes me impressed with this phone is even though this smart phone tries to follow the whole strategy of iPhone, Nokia Lumia 800 still brings its own identity to the market in order to avoid public impression that this phone wants to blatantly copy the iPhone.
Check out Nokia Lumia 800 at Amazon now to get the special price for this phone.
