The Nokia Lumia 800 is the first Windows Phone handset to spring from the Microsoft / Nokia tie-up announced roughly a year ago.
The Nokia Lumia 800 shares its exterior styling with the previously substantially less hyped Nokia N9, a Meego-based smartphone, although the screen size is reduced from 3.9 inches (854 x 480 pixels) to 3.7 inches (800 x 480 pixels) to conform to the Windows Phone spec list.
The CPU, however, increases from the 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 to the 1.4GHz MSM8255 Snapdragon/Scorpion which certainly helps add snap to theWindows Phone Mango operating system.
Nokia lumia 800 review
The Nokia Lumia 800 (£400 SIM-free), although being the more expensive of the two Nokia Windows Phone offerings (the other being the £299 SIM-free/£199 PAYG Nokia Lumia 710) shares the Nokia N9's 16-bit AMOLED ClearBlack display whereas the Nokia Lumia 710 sports a 24-bit ClearBlack TFT.
Nokia lumia 800 review
This being said, even though the colour depth is theoretically deeper than in the Nokia Lumia 710, AMOLED screens are seen as better than the older TFT technology due to the more vivid colours and better contrast ratios.
Nokia lumia 800 review
Moving away from Nokia comparisons, the Lumia 800 also has to compete with the likes of the HTC Titan and HTC Radar Windows Mango phones. When we compare screen size we find the Nokia Lumia 800 feeling a little small with the HTC Radar and HTC Titan entering the fray with 3.8-inch and 4.7-inch screens respectively although all competitors are limited to the same 800 x 480 pixel resolution.
Obviously the iPhone has managed to be a success with a smaller screen at 3.5 inches, but the trend towards bigger displays is increasing all the time, and we have to say we're fans of those over four inches thanks to the improved internet and media experience.
Nokia lumia 800 review
This means that the pixel density on the Lumia 800 is a little sharper, but in our side by side comparisons we noted very little difference between them.
When it comes to internal storage the Nokia Lumia 800 and HTC Titan are equal with 16GB of fixed internal storage, with the Nokia Lumia 710 and HTC Radar weighing in with 8GB a piece.
Based on the two manufacturer's product specs it soon becomes apparent that the Nokia Lumia 800 is intended to compete against the HTC Titan and the Nokia Lumia 710 with the HTC Radar.
When compared dimensionally with the HTC Titan (131.5mm x 70.7mm x 9.9mm and 160g) we note that the Nokia Lumia 800 (116.5mm x 61.2mm x 12.1mm and 142g) cuts a very slim profile, with a lighter yet reassuring weight.
The physical appearance of the Nokia Lumia 800 is a dream to observe and handle, with its smooth curves fitting snugly to the hand both with and without the protective case provided in the purchase packaging.
That said, if you're used to handling the current crop of super slim handsets doing the rounds in today's phone shops, you can't help but feel the Lumia 800 is a little on the chunky side, even compared to the iPhone 4S thanks to it being around 10 per cent thicker.
Nokia lumia 800 review
However, that's not to say it isn't an attractive device, with its large 3.7-inch AMOLED screen pushed to the sides of the chassis and a cool curved polycarbonate shell gives the phone a very premium feel indeed.
Nokia has worked very hard on the unibody design here, using top-mounted flaps to cover the charging port and SIM slot, but sadly leaving the battery inaccessible. Intriguingly, we're seeing a microSIM here, which seems to be the fashion for the next wave of smartphones.
Nokia lumia 800 review
The battery is something we can get on board with as this isn't the first Nokia device to have an enclosed power pack and makes sense if it allows a greater design freedom.
There was no easy option for battery removal on the Nokia N8 or Nokia E7, for example. The problem is that with a charge lasting no more than a day, the option to switch out the battery, as with the Nokia Lumia 710, would have been nice.
The microSIM is somewhat more of an annoyance, since we couldn't even carry an old Nokia as a back-up because the SIM card is a different size.
SIM card adaptors are available, but use them at your own risk since they have a tendency to wedge in some phones. Add to this the frustration when you find that some operators charge for providing a microSIM when on a standard SIM contract.
Nokia lumia 800 review
The SIM to microSIM switch comes down to the simple issue of space. In the phone, the microSIM sits within the metal assembly bottom right.
The Nokia Lumia 800 is quite reasonably priced, costing nothing on as little as a £26 Orange or Vodafone contract with Carphone Warehouse compared with HTC Titan starting at £31 pm with Vodafone and £36 pm with Orange.
the fact that it uses the Microsoft Windows Phone operating system. The system itself is nothing new, of course, releasing its latest incarnation (WP 7.5) on the HTC Titan and HTC Radar in 2011 and due for an update toWindows Phone Tango later this year.
A major point for and against WP7 for some is that it looks completely different to iPhone, Android, Symbian and Meego as the concept of application grids is nowhere to be seen.
Nokia lumia 800 review
Instead of the more standard home screen, or "Start Screen" in the case of Windows phone 7.5, the Nokia Lumia 800 uses "Live Tiles", fitting a 2x4 grid (although Calendar and Pictures tiles are full screen width) of tiles on the screen, vertically scrolling to display as many tiles as you wish to add.
Adding tiles to the Start screen is as easy as left swiping to the apps list, long pressing an app and selecting "pin to start", with removing a tile requiring a long press on the tile on the Start page and then tapping the drawing pin with a line through it.
Moving tiles around is just as easy, requiring a long press and then dragging them to the desired location.
Nokia lumia 800 review
At first we were unsure about the large tile based layout, finding it a little cumbersome and poor screen real estate usage, but within a couple of days our opinion changed. The major advantage is speed of use. You don't need to be looking as closely at your phone to use it as the chances of miss pressing are greatly reduced.
Having now used the phone for a few months, finding our way around the GUI is second nature. However, it still feels that the Start Screen could be better used, since although the 2 x 4 grid of Live Tiles visible at any one time act more as information sources as well as application icons, we still miss having access to more apps from a single switchable home screen.
Going forward, there will also be more advantages to the system as the Live Tiles as applications are able to show dedicated information instead of an icon - for instance, the BA app will turn into a QR code when you're about to board a flight which can be used in place of a boarding pass.
The other section of the home screen is the apps list, which is quite standard, and somewhat antiquated in some ways as it is just an alphabetical list of your apps, or app groups in the case of Office and Games.
Nokia lumia 800 review
In its defence this form of app list layout is, again, easy to navigate, knowing exactly where an app will sit in the list as done in the Windows PC start menu. This is further aided by the soft search button on the left hand side of the list providing a live filter of the list based on text entry.
This all means that folders are long gone, but after a while you realise that in this format, you don't need them - although as you fill the phone with apps, we would like the ability to sort them into little groups. Being able to search by letter isn't enough - we want customisation in the same way users are able to group together contacts and pin them to the start menu.
A backward step in WP7 is that the top status bar is not interactive like we have become accustomed to with other operating systems.
Nokia lumia 800 review
To toggle Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and Flight Mode on/off you have to go through Settings, which was a major frustration until we found an app on the Marketplace called Connectivity Shortcuts which brought this functionality to the Start screen as Tiles.
Another frustration is that the status bar often only displays the time, meaning you have no knowledge of connectivity or remaining power until you swipe down from the top of the screen to see these elements.
Microsoft thinks this cleans the screen up, but given knowing your signal is a pre-requisite for a lot of applications, we'd at least like the option to keep it there constantly - plus too many applications don't support the swipe-down method.
On a more positive slant, the repeated use of familiar icons throughout the user interface for specific functions, means that you know what a button does at a glance without having to read it. In this way the GUI feels intuitive rather than learnt.
Nokia lumia 800 review
Another feature Symbian users have become accustomed to over the years is the use of profiles to quickly switch between different scenarios in their daily life like, General, Silent, Meeting, Outdoor, Pager and Offline. Sadly, these are all gone except for Offline, which is now Flight Mode, and the ability to put the phone into vibrate only mode.
Although profiles have been around for many years, their usefulness has increased more recently with the invention of location and time-based auto profile switching apps, and this is what we really missed.
We had become used to having our phones automatically switching to sleep mode at night, conserving battery, dimming the screensaver and changing response to phone calls and messages at night and returning to normal mode the following morning.
One major area of frustration while using the Nokia Lumia 800 has been repeatedly hitting the back button to close Internet Explorer and other apps, because there's no Close/Exit button. The current WP7 coding means that apps close via the back button, but only from a specific screen which has to be navigated back to before the app can be closed/exited.
We have identified a way to ease the pain in Internet Explorer by opening the menu, selecting tabs, and closing all open tabs, at which point, a single tap on the back button now exits the app.
Nokia lumia 800 review
Even long pressing the back button to open the task manager does not provide an option to close open apps, but only permits switching between apps. This said, however we did not note any speed reduction with six apps showing in the Task Manager.
This is assisted by the fact that only a very select set of the apps on WP7 devices can run in the background and the rest are suspended (disabled) when not on top - we were very impressed with the speed of the Lumia 800 throughout testing and in truth, didn't see any real necessity to actually shut down the applications.
One major problem we did note: sliding your finger across the touchscreen would sometimes be inexplicably registered as a tap, opening an app or zooming into the text. We had hoped that the joint Microsoft OS and Nokia FW updates released in February would have fixed this, but sadly not, although the issue does appear to be occurring less often.
If you want to learn more about the new Microsoft mobile operating system, then check out our Windows Phone 7.5 Mango review.