November 2, 2011

Nokia is currently still the biggest cellphone vendor in the world, considering units sold and including non-smartphones like their S40 feature phones that are popular in India and South America (revenue-wise Samsung and Apple are bigger thanks to fat margins in smartphone area) And after the failure of their own operating systems (Symbian, Meego) Nokia decided to switch to Windows Phone from Microsoft.

A Nokia phone powered by Windows Phone? Really? Yes, really, dude:

In the middle of November 2011 in Europe and in 2012 in USA the first Nokia smartphones powered by Windows Phone are going on sale. The higher-end model is called Nokia LUMIA 800 which, in Spanish, means “Prostitute 800″.

In Europe Nokia Lumia 800 costs 499 euro and is available in 3 colors: black, pink (or magenta depending on interpretation) and cyan. I was able to test the Nokia Lumia 800 in black and pink and it was presented to me by 2 Nokia employees. Sincerely speaking, pink was much nicer to touch although probably both are made from the same plastic.

The logo “NOKIA” is visible only when environment light is bright,

but in darker conditions not at all.

This is not good because somebody may think you have a cheap Chinese knock-off and not original!

Generally the display is very bright, well visible in sunlight and sharp because it is AMOLED.

However, the display feels very small, tiny, particularly if you are not vertically challanged. It is 3.7 inches, but it is much narrower than the iPhone’s 3.5 inch display. In other words: it’s slightly longer than iPhone’s display but much narrower.

The phone runs Windows Phone 7.5 Mango (as seen above in the first screenshot) so nothing unique here software-wise apart from the fact that Nokia ads their own apps; Nokia Navigation (sat-nav with turn-by-turn nav and offline ability); Nokia Music (on top of Microsoft’s Zune); Nokia Maps (on top of Microsoft’s Bing; and Nokia App Hihlights:

I was playing with these apps and apart from sat-nav they are nothing especially interesting.

When it comes to cameras then this phone doesn’t have front-facing camera like other Windows Phone Mango phones from HTC and Samsung have, but only a camera on the back which has an 8 megapixel sensor, lenses made by German company Carl-Zeiss, and dual-LED flash. Quality of photos is on par with high-end Windows Phones from HTC and Samsung. Particularly HTC also has an 8 megapixel camera with low-light lenses but offers (better) Xenon flash instead of LED flash. This camera is worse than 12 megapixel camera in Symbian-powered Nokia N8 and than 8 megapixel in iPhone 4S.

Dissapointingly, unlike Samsung Windows Phones, this phone’s standard camera app doesn’t have built-in anti-shake.

But thanks to 3rd party apps that offer this feature, it is not totally dissapointing.

Advantages:

• AMOLED display visible in sunlight and sharp
• decent 8 megapixel camera with Carl-Zeiss lenses
• (for short people) not too big
• Nokia-exclusive apps included although only sat-nav really useful among them

Disadvantages:

• just another Windows Phone, not very unique
• display is just too tiny – much narrower than iPhone’s and with 3.7 simply not up to date considering now most smartphones have 4 inch or more
• no front-facing camera what is just not acceptable considering all new Windows Phone Mango phones from HTC and Samsung have it
• no 4G/LTE (available in several Android phones)
• no Internet tethering, both WiFi and USB, despite HTC mango phones having it and despite Android and iPhone having it

Conclusion

Nokia Lumia 800 is a piece of junk, so don’t buy it! For the same price you can get a high-end Android phone or middle-level iPhone (i.e. iPhone 4 and with 120 Euro more even iPhone 4S with Siri, for God’s sake even iPhone 3GS for 360 euro is cheaper than this Nokia and has much wider display). Of course in 2012 Nokia will be releasing yet higher end Windows Phones with 4 inch display and LTE/4G support, so clearly this piece of junk Nokia Lumia 800 is absolutely not worthing buying at all. What a piece of junk!

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