Nokia once had a big stake in the U.S. smartphone market.
I remember being jealous in high school that I couldn’t tell anyone my
Snake high score because I carried a Motorola phone. I seemed to be
the only kid without a Nokia device so, when I went to college, I
picked up the Nokia 6010. I was drawn to the color
screen and interchangeable face plates, and I carried it through all
four years of college, preferring its durability to the Motorola RAZR
that all of my friends had bought. The iPhone was announced in 2007
and, seemingly almost overnight, Nokia was completely gone from the
hands of U.S. wireless subscribers. Sure, there were a few flip phones
from Verizon Wireless over the years and a handful of Symbian devices
from AT&T and T-Mobile, but none of those phones had the power to
bring Nokia back into the spotlight. The Lumia 800 does. It isn’t just a
phone, it symbolizes Nokia’s efforts to re-enter the global wireless market
with a unique point of view and a fresh portfolio. It’s not available
here in the U.S. yet, but a variant almost certainly will be early next
year. Does the Lumia 800 push boundaries? Is it the best Windows Phone
out there? Are the hardware and software married so perfectly that the
competition might be looking on with envy? My full review follows
below.
Hardware
Not since the Galaxy S II have I been so excited for the FedEx person
to buzz my apartment and drop off a new review unit. There was a ton of
hype coming out of Nokia World surrounding the Nokia Lumia 800; it is
Nokia’s flagship Windows Phone for 2011 and we loved it during our initial hands-on.
Plus, I was secretly hoping that I’d receive a cyan-colored review
unit. As luck would have it though, I received a matte black one.
The Lumia 800 has a beautiful face, just like the N9, and it feels
heavy and solid in the hand. I love its contoured screen, which looks
almost like lacquer was poured into a basin and left to harden with a
nice, curved, top. The ClearBlack AMOLED screen is bright and colorful,
but side by side with the Samsung Focus Flash I found myself preferring
Samsung’s more vibrant Super AMOLED screen, which also had brighter
whites.
The buttons on the right side of the phone for volume up/down, power
and the camera appear to be faux chrome plastic and, while I like the
soft finish, the back is simple and a bit boring save for its
8-megapixel camera. There’s a small metal piece surrounding the camera
that identifies the Carl Zeiss lens, but I wish the back had etching,
more accents or anything that really screamed “I’m a Nokia flagship
phone!” Plus, it really attracts fingerprints and my Lumia 800 often
looked grimy.
Nokia included a plastic hatch for the microUSB port and a second hatch
for a microSIM card slot. You have to open the microUSB port to access
the microSIM and if you close the microSIM before the microUSB, the
two get caught and you’ll need a paper clip to re-open them. I like
that the hatch hides the ugly ports, but it was also a bit annoying
considering that I frequently hook my phones up to a computer for
charging or file transfers.
I usually keep all of my videos and photos on a single microSD card that I move from phone to phone. Most of the latest Windows Phone
7.5 devices lack a microSD port though, which is frustrating. It’s not
the Lumia 800’s fault, though, so I won’t harp on it too much.
Software
Nokia recently adopted Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) operating
system just like a number of other manufacturers, including LG, HTC and
Samsung to name a few. However, it differentiates itself by adding a
few of its own applications that truly add value to the phone. There’s
Nokia Maps, Nokia Music and Nokia Drive for turn-by-turn directions
installed out of the box.
First, a bit of background: If you’re unfamiliar with Windows Phone,
it offers one of the most intuitive user interfaces available on a
mobile phone today. The home screen is populated with a number of tiles
that can be customized and that can present “live” information, if a
developer so pleases. A swipe to the left reveals a full menu of all
the applications installed on your phone.
Microsoft maintains a tight ship when it comes to customizations, so
there aren’t different user interfaces to get used to, as is the case
with Android. Microsoft does allow Nokia certain liberties with its
devices, but the Finnish vendor has not strayed strayed much thus far.
So in terms of software, the only differentiation on the Lumia 800 is
the free navigation, music store and mapping applications.
A few years back before we all had Google Maps or Bing or any other mapping software
on our smartphones, there was Nokia Maps. OK, there was BlackBerry
Maps, too, but it wasn’t nearly as powerful. Nokia Maps was beautiful
and it worked well. Today, it still works quite well, although I prefer
the cleaner user interface in Google Maps. A search for “bar” near my
apartment in New York revealed several nearby pubs, but failed to
locate a bar just a block away that has existed for the past several
years. Zooming is fluid, however, and there are several views available
including a satellite image option. Overall, I preferred to use it over
Bing, which never seems to find what I’m looking for.
Unlike most Windows Phones, the Lumia 800 provides two options for purchasing new music out of the box:
Microsoft’s default Zune Marketplace and its own Nokia Music store.
Nokia Music allows you to access your music, purchase songs, find local
“gigs” and more. The shop also lists top songs, a welcome feature that
is lacking in Microsoft’s own Marketplace.
I loved the Gigs feature of Nokia Music. It brings up a list of local
concerts by date and provides the addresses. Nokia could have built on
this feature by allowing users to purchase tickets directly, or allowing users to tap the address for driving directions using Nokia Drive.
I live in New York City and don’t own a car, but I enjoyed Nokia Drive
for what it’s worth. The software provides free turn-by-turn directions
and allows you to download street maps by continent, country and state. I downloaded
a 102MB New York map in a few minutes and it’s just as easy to add
more, should you be preparing for a trip. There are also tons of
different voice options. The UI isn’t too crowded and there are both 2D
and 3D map modes. I won’t know how well Nokia Drive stacks up to
Google Navigation, my current favorite GPS client, until I have to
drive out of the city but it’s definitely a solid free application that other Windows Phone devices don’t have right now.
Call Quality / Data
Call quality with the Lumia 800 was pretty run of the mill; the audio
quality hardly knocked my socks off, but I didn’t experience any major
issues, either. The Lumia 800 supports AT&T’s 3G network in the
United States and, using http://dslreports.com/mspeed as a
speed test benchmark, I averaged around 700Kbps using an AT&T SIM
card. That’s pretty awful, considering most of AT&T’s own 3G
smartphones easily exceed 1Mbps.
The phone comes with its own headset with a built-in microphone. It works perfectly fine during phone calls,
but the team here at BGR discovered a weird issue thanks to a tip from
a friend of the site: if you connect the original Nokia headset and
place a call, it works just fine. You can then use any third-party
headset with a microphone as you wish. However, if you try to use a
third-party headset from the get-go, or before you use Nokia’s headset,
it won’t work. So basically, as it stands, you can really only use
Nokia’s headset unless you opt for a Bluetooth headset.
Camera
I’ve always looked forward to using the Carl Zeiss cameras on high-end
Nokia phones, but I wasn’t blown away by the quality of the pictures
taken with the Lumia 800. They offered a sharper picture, had a warmer
white balance and were more colorful than those shot with my iPhone 4,
but not by much. As I’ve said in other recent reviews, I recently
bought a relatively budget-friendly point and shoot and it still blows
away any smartphone I’ve used. While other reviewers may make arguments
that it’s time to leave the point and shoot at home, I disagree.
The Nokia Lumia 800 video automatically defaults to shooting in a VGA
resolution, but there’s also a 720p HD video option. 720p HD video shot
in my apartment wasn’t that amazing. The camera is slow at adjusting to
to new lighting and its auto-focus is just as sluggish. Unlike many
Android smartphones, the Lumia 800 doesn’t offer an HDMI port, so you
can’t hook it up to your HDTV to watch videos. The only way to get
content off of the phone is to either send it over a Wi-Fi or 3G
network, which isn’t really optimal with a large HD video, or connect it
up to a computer with Microsoft’s Zune client installed. I really,
really, wish it had a microSD card for this purpose.
Battery
Windows Phone devices typically offer above-average battery life and
the Lumia 800 proved no different. I was easily able to milk a full
day’s worth of battery life from the Nokia Lumia 800′s 1,450 mAh
battery. Users can’t access the battery, however, so you might run into
some issues if you ever run have a problem that would normally require a
battery pull. The first review unit I got was a bit buggy and a
battery pull might have helped in a few cases, but I had to perform a
hard reset on the phone instead and eventually I had to request a new
unit from Nokia. This was apparently an isolated software issue though,
and I don’t think it will impact launch units.
Conclusion
As I said at the beginning of this review, I couldn’t wait for the
Lumia 800 to arrive so that I could finally see just how well Nokia was
able to marry Windows Phone 7.5, an operating system I already love,
with the Finnish phone maker’s incredible hardware. I like the AMOLED
display, but it doesn’t blow me away like the Super AMOLED Plus screens
on Samsung’s devices. I’m not a huge fan of the polycorbonate build (it
feels like any other plastic to me) and think there are definitely
some weak hardware design points, such as the microUSB and miniSIM card
hatch. I know I’m alone here, though, as there are tons of people who
love the hardware design.
On the software side, the phone is fantastic. I prefer Nokia Maps to
Bing, which I’ve personally told Microsoft just never works well for
what I need a mapping app for. Windows Phone 7.5 is beautiful and
efficient, it just needs more great apps. And while the Lumia 800 camera
didn’t blow me away like I was hoping it would, it was satisfactory
and better than the camera my iPhone 4.
The Lumia 800 left a lot to be desired in the data throughput
department, but rumor has it Nokia is working with AT&T on a 4G LTE
device that could be unveiled during CES in January. For now, I think
most U.S. Windows Phone lovers should check out the HTC Titan, the
Samsung Focus S or the Samsung Focus Flash, which will be much more
affordable with a subsidy. If price doesn’t concern you, however, the
Lumia 800 should be at the top of that list. The day Nokia launches a
Windows Phone on a U.S. carrier with faster data, an aluminum body, and
perhaps a few color choices, I’ll no doubt be impatiently waiting for
my FedEx delivery person all over again.