The New Nokia Lumia 800

Nokia's Lumia 800 is a big deal. Why? Because it's the first mobile phone from Nokia to run Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system, the OS that Nokia is going to use on all its future high-end smart phones.
The handset boasts a fast processor, AMOLED screen and a camera with a Carl Zeiss lens. But is it good enough to revive Nokia as a serious player in a world of smart phones dominated by Apple, Samsung and HTC? Available now, it's around £470 SIM-free.

Operating system

The big difference between the Lumia 800 and previous Nokia smart phones is that this handset runs on Microsoft Windows Phone software. Naturally, it uses the latest Mango version of the operating system, which includes a number of new features, not least of which is support for multi-tasking.
Microsoft's previous mobile OS, Windows Mobile, was a mess. Thankfully the company went back to the drawing board and came up with a brand new interface. The results are very impressive. Once you've used it, it's not difficult to see why Nokia's head honcho decided to dump Symbian in favour of it.
Windows Phone looks absolutely gorgeous. Thanks to some slick 3D effects and its dynamic design, it feels more modern than even Android or iOS.


The main homescreen displays a column of live tiles that dynamically update to shows you various information. For example, the People Hub flicks through photos drawn from your social networking contacts, while the messaging and mail titles show you any unread messages you might have.
You can also pin applications, pictures, contacts and other bits and bobs to this homescreen to use as shortcuts. Swiping right reveals your full list of apps as a single scrollable list.
You can tap the search button to quickly find a particular app, or if you've got more than 44 entries in the list, Windows Phone automatically divides up your apps alphabetically so you can quickly jump to groups of apps.

Design

The Lumia's design will bring on a sense of déjà vu for anyone who has previously seen Nokia's N9 handset. The body is hewn almost entirely from polycarbonate and is available in three colours: black, cyan and magenta. The two long edges are curved like the old iPod Nano and the back is gently sloped at the top and bottom.
The result is that the phone looks slightly oblong when viewed side-on. Despite the use of plastic for the body, it has a very premium and sturdy feel. Besides, Nokia says that the plastic casing helps the handset's phone reception.

Processor, memory and speed

Nokia has built the phone around a 1.4GHz Qualcomm MSM8255 Snapdragon processor, which includes an Adreno 205 GPU. The OS has 512MB of RAM and 512MB of ROM to play with. There's 16GB of memory for storing music, videos, photos and apps.
Those specs may seem tame next to the dual-core processors used in the iPhone 4S and Samsung Galaxy S2, but the Lumia still feels like a very quick handset. This may in some part be due to the lower demands that Microsoft's OS seems to place on a phone's hardware. Windows Phone uses hardware acceleration for its 3D menu effects, scrolling and zooming, which seems to help keep everything rollicking along at a very sprightly pace. Apps open quickly and it's speedy when jumping between them. Pages are also quickly rendered in the browser.

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