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The Nokia Lumia 800 Experiments
The Phone
Hey, look everyone! Nokia made a relevant phone! The flagship Nokia Lumia 800, with a plastic unibody construction available in black, white, bright pink, and bright cyan, ticks all the boxes in terms of the modern day smartphone. Attempting a simplified design is something of a milestone for a company that previously specialised in sliders, grills, flaps, and ports, and I was pleased to see Nokia taking a leaf out of Apple's book when it comes to design.
Unfortunately 'leaf out of the book' is really as far as Nokia got. Right-handers will immediately notice the irritation of the 'home' button sitting exactly where the thumb naturally ends up when on a call. Every time you charge, or connect to a computer, you have to open a fiddly flap. That, and the flap over the microSIM, make so little sense that there are stickers on each out-of-the-box to tell you how to use them. The whole point of simplified design is that such stickers are entirely unnecessary, but instead ambiguity has prevailed.
First Things First
A little look at what's in the box. It's all pretty standard these days - headphones, USB cable, wall plug. There's also a bundle of booklets. The nice surprise, though, is the inclusion of a rubber skin that fits very neatly around the phone. It adds very little bulk and allows the phone to remain distinctly recognisable as the Lumia, but as with all cases it does detract somewhat from the intended look and feel. The cyan is also slightly bluer than the plastic used for the phone, a very subtle difference but one that I'm not a fan of all the same.
After I'd finished peeling off tiny stickers and rubbing away the gummy marks (why they used such 'sticky' stickers eludes me) from my cyan Lumia 800 it was time to switch it on. The camera and home button are actually identical, so I basically prodded around until the screen lit up. It's a real shame that somebody in the design department didn't pick up on just how ridiculous this is, but we've already identified that Nokia have made progress with this design, albeit not enough, so lets move on.
It asked me the time. After checking that I hadn't been in a dream for the last 12 years of my life, I, slightly confused, checked the Mac to input the precise information. Rule number one: don't ask the customer for something you can easily figure out for yourself. Time, date, timezone, hell you can even have a stab at the language from the location. Poor.
That sets the tone for the setup process. It doesn't seem to have changed much from Nokia phones of old. But it was over quickly enough, and then I was ready to get started.
You might be wondering at this time why I've paid so much attention to first impressions. The packaging used by Nokia for this phone screams iPhone, which basically means they're trying to make a statement about the product and start the experience at the unboxing level. Very good, but as you can see from the above, if you're going to go for fanfare from the get-go you really do need to follow through with every detail.
Hardware meets Software
Windows Phone an alien world. If iOS is from Venus, Android is from Mars, and Windows Phone 7.5 is from a solar system we haven't discovered yet. This, by the way, is wholly excellent. Praise must be poured upon Microsoft for having resisted the temptation to do what they're renowned for doing, copying something and getting it to the masses, and instead inventing something entirely new. One might say that, given Google had already done this so capably with Android, they didn't have a choice.
New Windows Phone may be, but intuitive it is not. I resorted to Danny, Google, Twitter, and, well, Danny to figure out how to do a number of things. But somehow this doesn't go against the Lumia 800, and the learning 'curve' becomes more a voyage of exploration accompanied by pleasant surprises and an appreciation that this was an OS that somebody bothered to design from the ground up.
One of the first things I did was create a Live.com account on the handset. Just like iCloud on iOS and Gmail on Android, Live.com forms the basis of the experience and enables features such as 'find my phone'. Despite setting this up, however, I couldn't figure out how to send an email to save my life. I tried the 'messages' app multiple times but figured out that this was purely for texts/MMS. It was only after some more fiddling with the settings, essentially changing nothing, that a Hotmail tile appeared as if by magic. Now, it all works just fine.
There are some great extras preinstalled that, for many, will make the Nokia Lumia 800 worth every penny. These are Nokia Drive (sat nav), Excel, Word, and Powerpoint. You also get both Maps and Nokia Maps. Available for free are SkyDrive (cloud storage), Translator, and Weather, all of which I'd advise grabbing. Then you install your usual haunts such as Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare. All pretty familiar to anyone who has owned a smartphone before, though less familiar is Danny's observation that apps can only be installed over WiFi. That's a bit of a kick in the nuts if you're out and about!
'Live' Tiles
'Live Tiles' is a feature that shows real promise. A home screen consisting of these large blocks means that apps are quick and easy to get to (important on a handset where unwanted taps are often picked up; seriously, I swear it just makes it up as it goes along), but more importantly it allows you to see basic information without going anywhere at all. Unfortunately most Live Tiles feature nothing more than iOS style badges that inform you of how many messages or notifications you have. The People one irritatingly flicks through tiny thumbnails of people from your Facebook and Twitter, which, while looking nice, offers no practical benefit whatsoever. The calendar makes a bit more sense (and is larger to fit more information on), but at its most basic you learn nothing more than you do from the tiny icon on iOS. "Me" is just irritating as hell, because it's a badly cropped picture of my face taken from Facebook. Pictures does give a nice slideshow of items from your camera roll.
We can think of Live Tiles as an innovative combination of widgets and app launchers. A great idea. But you can't fit many on-screen, and not enough apps take full advantage of them. It's a feature to watch and it definitely stands out as a positive as I continue to use the Lumia 800, but it's not going to change your life like the pull-down notifications bar did on Android.
Interlude
Before I wade into other hardware and software functionality of the Nokia Lumia 800, it's time to take a quick break and state this: None of it really matters. You heard me. Sure, everything you're about to read is certainly important, but at some point during the above a box was ticked in my head. A box labelled 'personality'. This is hard to pin down, but it starts with the aesthetics. The colour is great. The feel of the plastic, and the way the phone tapers at the top and bottom? Sublime. The screen feels more seductive on the end of a finger than any I've ever touched. I can't put it down. I guarantee that you won't get the same feel from 90% of the Android-powered handsets on the market today; the overhyped spec sheets wrapped in a myriad of materials from outer space that you can guarantee no designer ever touched and said 'yes, this is what I need to make my phone out of'.
Personality in an inanimate object is about more than the look-and-feel, however. One ace in the Lumia 800's hand is its semi-failure
being unique gives it allure in a way that the iPhone 4S, despite being so beautifully crafted, cannot emulate because everyone has one (though there are many good reasons for this, so just humour me). The Windows Phone 7 OS actually complements the quirky exterior by taking it beyond the glass into the user experience, and to that extent, intentionally or otherwise, Nokia have made a good vehicle for the OS to ride.
As screaming with personality as the Nokia Lumia 800 may be, you're about to learn the price of succumbing to its charms. Read on, good Talk3Ger, read on
What You See
The screen. There's a couple of issues with the screen, so lets start with hardware. Everything looks very cold
like it's in a deep-freeze. Tilt the screen away from you in any direction and there's a quite pronounced blue hue over everything. Software-wise, because of the very text-heavy style of the interface everything looks very bland and uninspiring. It looks, dare I say it, boring.
This 'boredom' becomes more pronounced when you move off of the Live Tiles. You're left with an incredibly mundane alphabetical list of every application on your phone. Know what? There's nothing intuitive at all about touching text. On iOS there are little icons the size of the end of your finger to prod at. Perfection. Seeing a screen full of words and touching those words seems rather illogical. Managing a large number of apps on this phone would be, quite literally, hellish.
This text-heavy approach is intertwined with the design ethos of the OS. If you enjoy looking at oversized type that doesn't fit on the screen then you'll love the Lumia. But in all honesty, while it works well in some places, there are just as many where it doesn't. Live Tiles with text cut awkwardly at the edge, apps with headings cut so short they make little sense; it's all just a bit too messy, and that's with everyone clearly bending over backwards to make everything look as consistent as possible. It's monotonous.
Vs What You Get: Camera
Now to play spot the difference. The Lumia 800 sports a 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss Tessar optics. Sounds impressive. But can it match up to, say, an iPhone 4S with its 8 megapixel snapper? Can it take usable photos at all?
Please turn your attention to exhibit A, 'lamp with three flowers'. You'll notice that the lamp base is somewhat in focus, as is the curtain to the right. The flowers, however, couldn't attract the gaze of the Lumia 800 for love nor money, even in macro mode. The iPhone 4S version, included for comparison, correctly identifies the flowers and allows the rest to fall softly into the background. It also has better colour reproduction, saturation, and contrast.
Walking along now to exhibit B, where we find 'a close-up of a single flower'. Weirdly, the Lumia has opted to pick out the background flower in the top left for focus, so the resulting image is again fuzzy, and little else has changed either.
Shuffling on to C and 'a landscape', the outcome is more interesting. Immediately apparent is the distortion on the comparison photo - not the iPhone's finest moment. But far more concerning is the total lack of definition on the part of the Lumia. Carl Zeiss Tessar optics clearly aren't anything to write home about, judging by this example. Look at how the sky has gone neon blue and the colour has been sucked out of everything else. This is like a smartphone picture from 5 years ago.
Exhibit D is the aptly named masterpiece 'sun lounger sans cushion'. The results speak for themselves really. Colour and focus clearly weren't high on Nokia's list for things the camera should be good at. I particularly love how the Lumia 800 appears to have tried to focus on the floor beneath the weave, rather than what's right in front of it. Bravo.
Our last exhibit on the tour of Nokia camera shame is the E, which stands for 'eruption of flowers'. What it doesn't stand for is 'eruption of vibrant colour', as is capably demonstrated by the Lumia. There's nothing good about the Lumia's attempt at capturing this photo whatsoever, so we'll leave the comparison shots now and move swiftly on to
Audio
Audio comprises three sections, so I'll address each separately below.
Call quality. The in-call speaker sounds tinny and weak. You can turn it up all you like, you'll hit maximum and still be desperately pressing for more. Otherwise, I've had several great conversations on the Lumia without issue so it's official: the Nokia Lumia 800 can make and receive phone calls.
Speaker quality. There's a relatively massive speaker grill on the base of the Nokia Lumia 800, which creates the expectation of great things when you fire up some music. Unfortunately the only thing to actually come out of the massive speaker grill is massive disappointment. The sound is shockingly tinny, and if you play music it all simply gets lost resulting in the output of nothing but noise. Otherwise, it's pretty loud, which is all the praise I managed to find here.
Headphones. I didn't use the provided pair, I used my own, switching between the Lumia 800 and iPhone 4S for the same parts of the same songs taken from my iTunes library. Unfortunately the issue with tinny sound persists here too, and as soon as any bass kicks in all detail is lost. Unfortunately you don't get any bass either.
I could have excused the naff speaker and the sub-par music playback through headphones had the call quality been phenomenal. This is a Nokia after all, these boys and girls should know how to make a telephone. But instead of hearing £400 fluttering in your earhole all you hear is the jangling of change. Cheap cheap cheap. Nokia must do better.
Conclusion
What we have here is a phone that could be one of two things, but is effectively neither. It could be a great budget smartphone, £200 of SIM-free magic to turn the industry on its head. But, unfortunately, it's exactly two-times more expensive than it should be. It could be a top-end premium smartphone. It's certainly promoted that way - a real lifestyle phone. But the components all seem so low-end, and the plastic unibody, while feeling great, hardly feels luxurious and damages easily to boot.
We also have something else. The Lumia 800 is a triumph. It's a beacon in a market saturated by copycats and mediocrity, and all the potential is there for a smash hit. But some committee in some room (or perhaps CEO Stephen Elop himself) has squandered the chances of the Lumia 800 by cost-cutting on the hardware and having complete disregard for attention to detail in the software. I don't believe any one person took overall responsibility for this handset, a fault that riddles right back to the core of Nokia's problems spanning a decade, and clearly no one actually used it or they'd have noticed the non-existent battery life that doesn't last a day. In a world where a handful of incredibly talented individuals create masterpieces in Apple's labs in California, taking something that could have been great and settling for average is simply unacceptable.
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Firmware on device as used: 1600.2487.8107.12070
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