My 800 is yet to receive any update notification (OTA or through ZUNE), but let us know if any of you got it.

Note: the update was initially expected to be released Jan 18th : TODAY- which means it’s quite possible this is the first Nokia update to ever reach on time, hopefully a start of a new trend.

Update: Yvonne who works for Nokia was kind enough to chime in at the comments below:

Hi all,
I can confirm that the rollout for the Lumia 800 update (version 1600.2483.8106.11500)just started. Please also check our information in the Nokia Discussions Forum via http://discussions.nokia.co.uk/t5/Software-Updates/Rollout-for-the-new-Lumia-800-update-version-1600-2483-8106/td-p/1277517.
BR, yvonne

You heard her go get downloading.

VIA, Thanks to mprince for the tip.

Click on me for full screen awesomeness!

The amazing people at Nokia Connects were nice enough to send me a Lumia 800 to trial out for a while, so first off a shout out them for making this possible, they have some truly wonderful people working for them.

Now a bit about the extent of my relationship with OSes other than Symbian/S^3, I have an HP touchpad (Firesale FTW) so I’ve used WebOS as well as Android (CM7 Mods FTW too) on it, I’ve never owned an iOS device but I’ve seen my friends iphones, ipads and ipods more than enough to know quite a bit about the OS; but I have NEVER used Windows Phone (be it Mango, 7 or even 6.5) so the experience with the Lumia 800 was weirdly exciting for me because it mixed an amazing hardware design with an OS that could only be described as “Different”.

Therefore the main point of this review is to hopefully give readers a good look at what Windows Phone is all about, more than a review the Lumia 800 itself. The way I see it most of us Nokia fans were too busy fawning over the N8-00 when Windows Phone was first released (November 2010), of course back then S^3 was still fresh so nobody could have possibly imagined that within a year Nokia phones would be running Windows, for that reason I realized/guessed (possibly incorrectly) that a lot of Nokia fans have no idea what WP is like (to be specific: ME), I don’t want to get into a discussion of whether it was the right choice or not, the fact is that it IS done so let’s see what the new Nokia looks like.

#1) Unboxing + Design

#2) Setting Up the 800

#3) Metro UI & People Hub

#4) Camera:

1) Unboxing + Design:

Box Contents all lined up

There are more than enough unboxing videos of the Lumia 800 floating around the internet, and the hardware specs of the device have been covered more than enough; regardless no review would be complete without an unboxing so here’s my attempt (My first unboxing vid ever, I obviously did a wonderful job, dropping the device before it’s even out of the box and all!)- filmed using my ingenious N8 quad-pod (patent pending)

My first impression of the device design wise is that it’s GORGEOUS, (I had requested a Cyan one but oh well). Even though the 800 is made of polycarbonate (which in all honesty is basically plastic) Nokia still have managed to make it feel amazing. I fail to understand how this feels sturdier than me Aluminum bodied N8 but it does, it feels more compact (which just proves that you can make a device that isn’t glass or metal that doesn’t feel like twig- *cough cough SII Cough* ).

The phone comes with what you would expect: Standard 3.5mm earphones, A Micro-USB cable which doubles out as a charger when attached to the plug converter thing; however Nokia have gone above and beyond, providing a Silicon-Rubber housing for the 800, which hardly adds any width to the device at all, and has a super snug fit (personally I wouldn’t use it; simply because I love the feel of polycarbonate). As you might have noticed in the Quick unboxing I wasn’t all too impressed with the headphones accompanying the device, they had no dedicated music control (just a single talk/answer button) and I couldn’t get them to stay in my ears at all! Not even to test out the sound quality, I literally could not keep them in for more than 5 seconds.

Of course the Lumia 800 (and the 710) use Micro-sims rather than normal sims (seeing as this is a trial device I couldn’t bring myself to cut my sim for a review sorry). The sim and charger port mechanism is really interesting and/or weird; the charger port/USB  is a sort of flip thing where you press down on one side to make it pop-up (very fragile, so be careful), once the USB port door is open you can slide the micro-sim slot to the left a bit to have it pop-out as well; the cool part is that the area around the sim and USB slots are magnetic, to ensure proper closure of the ports I guess.

Design-wise I think it would have been better to have the USB port at either end of the device, not next to the Headphone jack, just because it would be easier to press down on (really difficult to explain but anyone who’s tried the 800 or the N9 should be able to understand).

The 800 comes with a 3.7″ (800×480) AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, which like the N9 is ever so slightly curved making those glorious swiping motions much more fun. I’ve read reviews about where people were bashing the 800 and the N9 for using something called PenTile display (basically if you look really close you *should* be able to see a bunch of lines running through the screen) personally I see nothing at all; in fact the screen is the second best thing about the 800 (after the amazing design), due to the curvature of the screen anything on the display looks like it’s floating somewhere between the phone and you’re fingertips (in the interest of being un-bias it is possible that I don’t see the PenTile because I’m upgrading from my N8 which has a less than acceptable Pixel density).

2) Setting Up the 800:

The first time you boot the Lumia 800 you have an option to set-up your Windows Live account as well as your Nokia account immediately before getting  to anything else (visible in the un-boxing video); however since the WiFi connection wouldn’t have been setup yet I skipped over that part and set it up later. As soon as the Lumia detects a Wifi network in range it asks if you’d like to set-up a Wifi connection with it, alternatively you can set it up through “Setting>Wi-Fi”, However try as I might I wasn’t able to locate the “Nokia Account” later (by the prompt I understood it was referring to a Nokia account similar to my Symbian Nokia account and not a Nokia/Ovi Email account).

Is this Nokia account the Same as Nokia email?

Nokia have included a handy tool called “Contacts Transfer” which can be used to copy all your contacts from an older Symbian device over to your new WP device via Bluetooth, which works quite smoothly (demonstrated below), however one feature I missed was the ability to transfer SMS messages from your older phone onto the new one as well (this function as available between older Symbian devices and Symbian 3).

Setting up your accounts can be a bit tricky if it’s your first time around on WP (check out the Video for a walk-through), I spent the first 30 minutes trying set it up from my “ME hub” rather than from the “Settings>Emails+Accounts” menu. Once you’ve got your accounts up and running all your contacts from all accounts (Facebook, Gmail, Hotmail, Twitter) will appear merged together in your “People Hub”. You can choose to filter out these accounts leaving only ‘Windows Live’ (Phone numbers/contacts are saved to your windows live account); unfortunately with 4 different accounts synced my people hub became a complete mess, cluttered with emails of people I only contacted once mixed with random Facebook friends and twitter followers; a feature that is definitely needed here is a confirmation of contact syncing when the details aren’t enough e.g.: if I have two contacts simply named ‘Joe’ on two different accounts I would have preferred a prompt checking if this the same Joe or not.

3) Metro UI & People Hub

Side By Side against My N8 Running Belle

One of the most unique features about WP is the Metro UI/Tiles look, rather than Widgets; WP is based on a single ‘Homescreen’ on which you can place as many  ‘Live Tiles’ as you want, but only 2 or 1 tiles per row depending on the width of the tile (Reminds me of early S^3 widgets). The tiles on WP Mango are called “Live Tiles” due to the fact they are constantly updated/refreshed to give a more interactive feel to the user, allowing you to view your missed calls, emails, messages and much more without having to access said location; the Live tile simply displays the fact that you have a message on your home screen.

When In standby mode there is almost no way to tell if the Lumia 800 is even on or not, unlike the N9 which has the amazing “double-Tap” to wake up, or S^3 phones with their always on Clocks, the 800 appears dead unless the lock screen button is pressed, upon which you get to the unlock screen which displays your upcoming events, the time & date, notifications as well as battery life.

Once the phone is unlocked you get to the Metro-UI which can be customized to multiple colors depending on your preference, to change the theme color simply head to ‘settings>Theme and choose whatever color suites your mood.  However the Lumia 800 comes with a special “Nokia-Blue” color for its UI which seems to be the most attractive on the phone.

Windows Phone distinguishes itself from other OSes by bringing your contacts to life, on WP contacts stop being names on your phone and become ‘people’; hence the People Hub, which combines all your accounts from Google, Windows Live, Facebook and Twitter all in one place to keep you updated and constantly linked. WP automatically merges contacts from different accounts with the same name together (which lead to a bit of confusion due to incorrect merging), each contact has a number or tabs including: the main contact info/Profile, What’s New (which brings you the latest updates from FB and twitter), Pictures (which brings all pictures recently uploaded) and history which displays your latest contact with the contact be it via email, phone or FB message.

I love how some of the next pane/tab is visible at the end of the screen

The Virtual keyboard on WP is an absolute joy to use, with accurate text correction and nice tapping sounds every time a key is hit, it’s definitely my favorite onscreen keyboard; a complete 180 degrees polar opposite of the atrocious stock S^3 keyboard that we all love to hate. I didn’t bother reviewing the Keyboard here as Jay has already made a nice comparison video between Symbian Anna and WP 7.5 which can be found HERE. My only complaint about the onscreen keyboard would be that in landscape mode the space on the edges is not fully utilized, losing about a complete centimeter to the time in the upper left corner.

Market place & Pre-Loaded Apps:

Apps… the whole reason Nokia have a Windows Phone, “ecosystem” that magical word, what’s so special about the Windows Phone market place? At this point I’m going to say something that I’ve never believed until I used WP: “Quantity is irrelevant!” this is where my usage of Android kicks in, sure android might have a gazillion apps, but almost 75% of them are buggy, have a garbage UI and consist of trying to connect two dots together (Nokias Snake on the 2100 was more sophisticated than some of the apps on the android marketplace).

Windows Phone on the other hand seems to be promising in both aspects, quantity as well as quantity; the growth of the WP market is steadily increasing (currently at 55K) but what’s more important is the fact that they are fifty-five thousand quality apps out there. The one consistent factor between almost all apps I’ve tried on the Lumia 800 is the fact that they have a beautiful UI alongside a well coded game/app engine (due mainly to the fact that Microsoft is offering large incentives to bring in the developers).

The market place app itself is beautifully designed dividing its content into Nokia collection/apps/games/music/podcasts, with detailed classification of each category/genre of apps and games; for example games in the market place are classified into Xbox live/ top/ free/ new making finding whatever you’re looking for loads easier. Another wonderful feature is that as far as I can tell every single app/game has a trial mode meaning no need for buyer’s remorse, try out the app if you like it buy it; if not nothing lost.

One feature setting the Lumia 800 apart from the rest of the Windows Phones out there is the inclusion of the ever amazing Nokia Maps/Drive, which is just as smooth and amazing as it is on S^3 with a considerably faster GPS lock than that on my N8. Maps can be downloaded for your selected country from within ‘Nokia Drive’ to enable navigating in offline mode. Nokia Maps also has a feature to find nearby popular places, relying on tour guides as well as other users reviews to give you the best recommendations of nearby places.

Places of Interest

Nokia also includes their own “Nokia Music” which enables you to connect to Nokias Own music server (formerly Ovi Music) rather than connecting to the Windows Phone marketplace to download any tracks you might have purchased on your old Symbian phone. Nokia also included ‘Gig Finder” which locates nearby concerts/events depending on your location and will display them within the app (sadly no gigs were located when I tried this in Jordan); one other interesting feature is something called “Nokia Mix Radio” which is their own Online Radio service that customizes playlists depending on what music you have on your phone, to help find music similar to your taste. Nokia Mix Radio enables you to directly download the tracks you enjoy from the Music store; however my Lumia 800 didn’t have Mix Radio at all, nor was there an option to activate it (possibly region related?? Although it’s an online music service so that shouldn’t matter???).

*Should* Display Mix Radio as well in the list

4) Camera:

Now to what is usually the most notable feature on Nokia phones: The camera. Without beating around the bush I must say that the 8mp shooter in the Lumia 800 was sadly a let-down, here’s why. The main reason is that alot of previous N8 owners who fell in love with the N8s camera are going to be switching to WP soon, unless they want to stick around for the rumored N8 successor which is supposedly running Symbian as well; regardless for me transitioning from the king of camera phones down to the Lumia 800 (yes, I used the word ‘down’ cause it is indeed a couple of steps down) was a difficult process, on my N8 I became used to “Quick-Draw Point and Shoot” with almost all pictures coming out at near professional range quality. The Lumia 800 on the other hand is a phone that is difficult to get a handle on, but once you get setting just right to it can still produce an impressive shot.

Now the 800s camera isn’t as horrible as I’m making it out to be but as mentioned I’m comparing it to the abilities of my N8. Normal everyday capturing is quick and simple, and will usually give you a decent picture provided there’s enough lighting available; however the landscape low light photos were absolutely dreadful barely capturing any light at all (smaller lens?) compared to the iPhone4s and the N8 it didn’t stand a chance at low-light images. Macro images surprisingly were extremely nice, even with below optimal lighting they still came out stunning, even somehow surpassing those of my N8s when it came to super closeups.

Random well-lit photo, with full auto settings on.

A close-up macro mode in low light, surprisingly nice (the candle is surrounded by glass so no flash was used for capturing this)

Cookie anyone?

Un-impressive low light scene capture, the water isn't supposed to be lit, it's just normal water (BTW that's the worlds tallest fountain)

Same Exact photo taken with the iPhone4s 8MP camera.

More Images Here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/23218958@N05/sets/72157628855141245/

The video capturing was above par on the 800, it has the ability to shoot at 720p with full autofocus, which results in decent sample videos even with indoor fluorescent lighting; the autofocus was snappy to respond and coped well with closeups/macro videos. However it did seem that some colors ended up over saturated when filming up close, in the video below (final 5 seconds or so) the crown of the parrots head is actually closer to a greenish-yellow, yet in the video it appears almost blue/turquoise, regardless I can’t complain about the Lumia 800s video capturing abilities as it was overall impressive.

Another point worth mentioning is the beautiful camera/video camera UI on windows phone, it’s a completely flexible experience allowing you to swipe directly into your gallery from the camera view, as well as pinch out to view your previously taken pictures side by side with whatever you’re looking at in normal camera view. I also loved the display of the video length during recording; the big numbers on the screen are large enough to be viewed from 3 feet away yet un-obtrusive to your recording view.

Split screen of previous image alongside live view from camera lens

I’m not sure whether this option is unavailable in all WP or just the Lumia 800; but there is no ability to zoom while recording (you have to select your preferred zoom level before starting, and stick with it). Another thing that puzzled me is the inability to use the volume buttons to zoom in/out in normal camera mode, nor can you pinch to zoom, the only way to zoom is to use the onscreen +/- buttons which in all honesty is annoying.

Beautiful Camera UI

5) Media (Pictures, Videos and Music)

Media on Windows Phone is split into Music and Pictures, with each type of content appearing in its respective category; while videos appear in both categories. Both Pictures and Music come with their own live tiles that continuously randomizes different background depending on the content of the phone.

The Photo hub consist of 3 different panes Content on Phone/What’s New/ Favorites, Displayed on a backdrop of a random photo from your album split onto three separate screens giving a sort of panoramic view to your pictures.  “Content on the phone” display all content on the phone itself be it downloaded, captured or photos from a favorite contact you chose to save on your phone. “What’s New” displays the latest photo media coming from all accounts you have linked to your phone be it Twitter updates, Facebook, or skydrive pictures shared via Windows Live; What’s new also enable you to directly view all comments on a specific picture and to add your own without having to enter the browser or Social hub. Favorites are a set of photos you choose to star or add to favorites, making them quickly accessible and making them appear as the background for the Photo Hub and the Live tile more often.

The Music Live Tile will take you to your music library where you are first greeted with a pane containing your last played music, and currently playing for quick access; from there you can quickly access the rest of your music library and playlists by simply swiping to the right. The Music hub directly supports entering the Zune music store to download Music, Videos or Podcasts from the Music Marketplace; exclusive to Lumia phones however is “Nokia Music” which also syncs your OVI account music files to your phone and bringing you access to Nokias “Mix Radio”.

When playing music you have an option to use “Smart DJ-Mixer” which is an addition to Windows Phone Music player, basically it searches your music library to tracks similar to what you choose to play be it by Genre, Artist, or Album and plays them after each other to suite your mood, a nice feature for those of us with 16GBs of music. Music can also be controlled from your homescreen or lock screen by simply pressing the volume buttons, which will bring up the currently playing track with the options to skip/previous and Play/Pause.

Videos as mentioned can be accessed from both the Music hub and Picture Gallery, playing only in landscape mode with the ability to resize to full screen or play in a slightly windowed mode. Unfortunately the Lumia 800 is incapable of playing DivX files and .AVI which must first be formatted into .Mp4 through Zune. As a long time Symbian user I found myself constantly long pressing on photos looking for  a “mark multiple” option, which sadly does not exist, therefore you have to delete each photo/video separately one-by-one.

6) Bing Search:

Search on Belle Vs. Mango (Winner is obvious)

In all honesty the moment I opened the search feature on the Lumia 800 I tried to look into the settings on how to switch the default search engine to Google (hint: you can’t), for good reason though. The Bing search that comes bundled with the Lumia 800 is nowhere near the slow socially awkward search engine that I last tried about 4 years ago, the new Bing is fast smooth and sexy, coming with image search, voice input search and a music finder (similar to Shazam) it truly is a fully functional wonder.

The background Image on the Bing Search (Quickly accessed by the capacitive magnifying glass button) changes every day showing you a random image with a set of new ‘information squares’ related to the search image, which will either take you to a related Photo or Map location depending on the ‘hint’.

Normal text searches are straight forward carried out on Bing bringing you Web Results, Images Results and even Location based results depending on where you are. Once your location is enable you can select any location from Bing maps and search for Highlighted areas, Shopping places, ‘eat & drink’ as well as ‘See + Do’. My two favorite features regarding Bing search are Picture Search and music detecting service, Picture search scans QR codes and gives you their direct link to their source, or it can be used to scan text and translate it into multiple different languages. The even more impressive feature is the music identifying feature (Anyone who’s used Shazam knows what I’m talking about); it took less than 5 seconds of playing “Adele’s- Set Fire to The Rain” (at random time-frames) for it to pop-up as the result with a link directly to the Zune Marketplace in case you feel like purchasing whatever track you just found.

Overall Bing search is extremely impressive (although I’d prefer it if Microsoft stopped promoting the phrase ‘Bing it’), if Bing had as much functionality on my desktop as it did on the Lumia 800 then it would be my default engine in a heart-beat.

*Note: I didn’t review the browser due to the fact that I’m not really good at browser comparison, the only note I can say about it is that don’t let the fact that it’s called “Internet Explorer” put you off, it’s really good

7) Miscellaneous:

(Some of the things about WP in general that bugged me, especially being a long time Symbian user)

First off of course is the fact that WP is a closed platform, meaning there’s a very limited amount of freedom when it comes to customization and side-loaded apps; in all honesty my biggest argument against iPhones was “at least I can do what I want without jumping through hoops”, sadly you can’t say the same when you’re using a Windows Phone. Until almost 2 weeks ago Windows had offered a small piece of solace in the form of “Chevron unlocker” which for $9.00 enabled you to purchase a token that ‘unlocks’ your Windows Phone device, this unlock enabled you to side-load (install from outside the marketplace) up to 10 apps at a time; not exactly Symbian/Android freedom, but it was nice. Unfortunately as of two weeks ago Chevron ran out of unlockers and this option is no longer available; the only alternative is a $99 developers unlock which is quite pricy for something that most of us have grown to as a standard. Sadly the lockdown on outside settings isn’t just for applications, even the ringtones are just a selected few, without the direct option to set your favorite tunes as your ringtone. The limitations have even hit Bluetooth, meaning you can’t send media files over Bluetooth from one device to another (I tried multiple times with my N8 as well as my touchpad to the Lumia but always received the same failure message).

Another puzzling ‘feature’ about Windows Phone is that every-time you lock the screen your WiFi disconnects, presumably in the interest of saving battery, but I found this ridiculous; considering how  if your connected to cellular data the data connection remains active when the device is in standby which definitely takes a much larger toll on the battery life. At the very least there should be an option to stay connected to WiFi while device is locked, how else would someone without a data plan receive Emails and Notifications???

The battery life on the 800 is ‘amusing’ to say the least, as it doesn’t seem to follow any laws at all; the first two days that I received the device it barely made it 6 hours each day (without a sim/airplane mode)! However the battery life has steadily increased with me over the past week to make it easily through a complete day; add to that the promised Battery update sometime mid-January and it shouldn’t be a problem.

Props to @Stephenquin58 for this!

Of course if you plan on owning a windows phone you’d better have Zune installed on your PC/Laptop as it’s the only easy way to copy content to and from your mobile. Thankfully though Zune isn’t as tedious to use as the original Ovi Suite.

Wrap-Up:

The Lumia 800 is a beautiful phone, paired with what is possibly one of the most beautiful and consistent UIs I’ve seen so far, sure it might have some niggles in the design and setbacks in the OS being walled up; but when I think about the amazing People hub, the beautiful screen design and the general feel of the device it’s definitely a phone that shouldn’t be passed on, or at least not before taking an extremely long look at what you’re giving up, followed by second thoughts and doubts if you choose something else.

Windows Phone is an OS that was obviously not rushed, it was kept under covers until almost every bug and defect were weeded out, appearing only in its best; unfortunately the OS itself is more walled up than most Symbian fans will be used to, but nothing that’s an absolute deal breaker alone.

Obviously the 800 isn’t for everyone, if you want a N8 Successor this IS NOT the phone for you, if you want a second N900 this IS NOT the phone for you. If like me you grew bored of having an amazing phone that unfortunately had almost no proper apps, running an OS that had potential but was neglected and under-appreciated, if you want to upgrade your phone to something more modern with an OS that’s silky smooth and a beautiful yet strange UI then THIS IS the phone for you.

-Once again thanks to the people at Nokia Connects for making this possible, you guys are great!

-After All this time? ….. “Always.”

It’s been over a year since the N8 was released, and yet according to techradar it’s still the king of cameraphones. The people at Techradar pitted the N8 against the Samsung Galaxy 2, the iPhone4S, HTC  Evo 3D, Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc and the Motorola XT720; in a series of complicated and thorough tests of each phone. The phones tested were graded by their overall usability in every day life, the ease of using the camera and lowlight conditions.

Out of the five phones that where tested only the N8 and the Motorola had Xenon flash, and the N8 alone had more than 8MP; but also had the lowest pixel density on it’s screen; the N8 also had the largest amount of camera settings and options while the 4S and Xperia lacked a manual ISO change even.

The camera-phones were tested in a variety of settings under different conditions including a “Color Accuracy test” where they shot a mulit-colored chart and saw the best color differentiation and preservation, as well as a “Lab test” where they captured an image of a detailed graph and saw which phone captured the largest amount of detail at 100% crop.

In both the Color Accuracy test and the Lab Chart test the N8-00  came in first place (With the 4S coming in last in the color accuracy, and being disqualified from the Lab test due to lack of manual settings).

Our resolution tests reveal that the Nokia N8 records the most detail, achieving a resolution score of 2,200 line widths per picture height (LH/PH) at its lowest sensitivity.

Our color accuracy test reveals that the Nokia N8 performs the best, with a score of 102.5%

Our resolution tests reveal that the Nokia N8 records the most detail, achieving a resolution score of 2,200 line widths per picture height (LH/PH) at its lowest sensitivity. This is on a par with some top-end compact cameras.

Overall performance came down between the 4S and the N8 with a choice between detail or Natural colors:

In terms of all round image quality the battle is really between the iPhone 4S and the N8. The N8 is capable of capturing the most detail, but the iPhone 4S produces the most natural looking images – although the colour can vary a little from shot to shot. The Apple iPhone also has the benefit of being incredibly easy to use and has a startlingly fast shutter speed.

Final Verdict:

The winner of this test is the Nokia N8 – but only in terms of providing the best pictures quality in the widest range of areas. If you’re looking for the phone on the market that will offer you the best pictures in a wide variety of scenarios, we’d suggest you plump for this phone

The 4S came in as a runner-up, or basically for people who want a camera that’s always set on auto without the need for manual tinkering.

The winner of this test is the Nokia N8 – but only in terms of providing the best pictures quality in the widest range of areas. If you’re looking for the phone on the market that will offer you the best pictures in a wide variety of scenarios, we’d suggest you plump for this phone

Source Tech Radar (check it out really…)

GSMarenas Battery test for the Lumia 800 are in; and the results are bittersweet. Just to keep things in perspective for everyone; the main comparison should be between the Lumia 800 and the N9, considering that they both have the same battery, same type of screen and almost the same screen size (Lumia 800 is .2 inches smaller screen-wise).

3G talk time:

Ooooo Pretty colors!

As you can tell from the graph above the 800 did quite decent in regards to 3G talk time, scoring the 4th highest battery life on leaderboard, with almost an hour and a half more talking time than it’s twin the N9. In fact according to GSM arena the 800 was the WP device with the longest talk-time.

“The Lumia 800 also outdid the other Windows Phone smartphones we have tested so far – HTC Radar and Samsung i937 Focus S.”

Video playback:

Unfortunately the 800 didn’t do as well in video playback scoring a meager “5:52″ while the slightly larger screened N9 scored “8:40″. that’s almost 3 hours more!!

Web Browsing:

Even worse is the web browsing times, the 800 barely lasted 4 hours!  (N9 was about 30 minutes more), of course this is mainly due to Amoled screens not playing nice with Web page backgrounds; but still kinda sad.

Find the full review over at GSM Arena: http://blog.gsmarena.com/nokia-lumia-800-battery-test-now-over-see-how-it-did-test/

Side Note: after testing the 800 GSM arena did the battery tests on Androids latest flagship “The Galaxy Nexus”  (which if you recall beat out the 800 for gizmodos gadget of the year) the Nexus scored almost the same as the 800 when it came to Talk Time and Video playback, but if you thought the 4 hours on the 800 was bad, well then… the Nexus just scraped 3 hours of browsing time! That’s just embarrassing…

(Nexus Battery Review here: http://blog.gsmarena.com/samsung-galaxy-nexus-battery-life-fully-tested-results-come-out-disappointing-test/ )

*Note: I’m not sure what the status of the 800 they tested on is but I’m assuming that it wasn’t suffering any severe undercapacity issues, still there is hope for the 800 once Nokia release the battery fix (rumored to be Jan 18th)

Thanks to Vikas for the tip, Source: GSMarena 1 , 2

Grab it here:

http://store.ovi.com/content/225051

 

Kik Messenger is the totally free, crazy-fast cross-platform messenger app that connects you to your friends in real-time. Use Kik to chat, share pictures, plan outings with groups, and stay connected to the people who matter most.

You ’re going to fall in love with Kik Messenger. Here’s why:

* Hands-down the fastest smartphone messenger
* Instant message notifications – Sent, Delivered, Read
* Beautiful look and feel

*note: I will add some screenshots as soon as I get the app up and running.

Update:

Ok I got the application installed and registered, unfortunately none of my contacts have their numbers on their kik account so I’ll have to add them via their User-names one by one. Thankfully the kind people at kik were kind enough to give us a mock account to talk to (similar to cleverbot I guess) so I gave the app a little spin.

So a quick run through: for those of you who aren’t familiar to kik it’s a instant messaging application for multiple platforms that uses WiFi/Mobile Data, the main advantage of all these applications (Whatsapp, Kik, Liveprofile) is push support for instantaneous message retrieval as well as being Extremly light on the data plan. Currently Kik supports iPhone, Android, Symbian, BB & WP 7.5

Here are a couple of screenshots and first thoughts about Kik running on my N8:

I have no idea why But I REALLY liked the anna squirkle icone for kik, I think it’s the dark grey in it but it just made it look really nice and professional (as promised).

Plain old start-up screen. (Auto-startup on reboot CAN BE disabled from the options menu, something that isn’t present in Whatsapp at the moment)

A nice and simple startup registration screen, where you set your real name/email as well as the username you choose to be identified by through other users (one of the advantages of Kik is the ability to add users with only a username no need for a phone number)

Of course you can still find contacts using their phone number, provided they supplied it upon registration (optional).

A default added contact is the “Kik Team” which I guess is there to check if the service is running properly, or just to pass time if like me you have no friends (Forever Alone).

Of course you can add smileys as well as attachments to your messages. (There is also a group messaging feature but I haven’t tried it out yet- no friends and all)

http://n33rg.blogspot.com/2011/11/whatsapp-vs-kik-nokia.html (thanks David)

Okay so I know I haven’t done the best job out there and I’m the first to agree it was rushed. Mainly because people want to know everything about a phone before they buy it, and seeing as it’s being released already in many countries, there isn’t really the luxury of taking my time. Still, that’s no excuse for poor reviewing. So I’m sorry.

Anyway, I’ve taken Harangue’s advice, and compiled my thoughts into one written review. Obviously, if you want to take a look at each part in the video series, you can check out my YouTube channel.

Contents:

1. Design
2. OS
3. Swiping
4. Social integration
5. Multitasking
6. Calling
7. Camera
8. Sound Quality
9. Screen
10. Text input
11. Issues
12. Overall judgement

 

1) Design

I know we’ve all heard about how “beautifully simple” the phone is from various Nokia staff, and the fact is, it’s true. The phone has an elegant look, mainly due to the subtle curve in the glass, the laminating over the screen and the feel of the phone itself. It’s the simple things that make it, well, beautiful.

The phone’s body has a slight curve that fits well in the palm of your hand. It allows the user to go across the screen with one-handed use, and it’s an easy and enjoyable experience. Although I thought I’d find having the power button on the side a bit annoying, it’s easy to get used to.

The silicon case that comes in the box is a nice addition. It sits relatively flush with the phone, sitting at under a millimeter above the phone’s screen and about 3mm above the camera. It’s soft yet durable, and doesn’t take away from the feel of the phone. (The main reason why I don’t use protective cases, however, I have purchased a White one with a screen protector and will show it on the site when it arrives.)

2) OS

Although it is an open OS, as a Symbian user, I wish there was more customisation in terms of themes for the N9. I also would have liked the option to disable transitions. I know it makes the UI a little bit better, and there are people who want transitions. I just find that it can give the (false) impression of delay or lag on the phone.

It is easy to use and, if you’re a fan of the N900, there is still a lot of modifications that you can do, once you enable developer mode. Even if you’re not into modifying and hacking your phone, the N9 is still a good all-round smart phone.

It’s been a bit hard to make a judgement on battery life as I’ve been using it a little more than I would in everyday use, but as it stands, the battery life is still very decent. At first it was poor, but as I’m moving into using it more on a day-to-day basis, it’s getting better. I’m averaging more than a day on a single charge. At the moment, my battery if on 35% being on for 1d, 9h, 4mins. A lot better than my N8 used to be. (I’ll showcase the app below in reviews in the near future.)

3) Swiping

The swipe interface is something that takes no getting used to. In fact, after I first used the phone, I went to swipe on my N8. It’s such a fluid and easy way of using the phone. Contrary to some of my videos, it’s not that easy to accidentally swipe away. My only issue is misjudging the screen, although when it’s not a black themed app, it’s not that hard.

There is no requirement for the speed at which you swipe, so long as your finger moves from one edge to the other. Some games, I’ve noticed, disable swiping unless the game is paused or you are in a menu, most likely as a way to prevent accidental exiting, like I did on Angry Birds.

4) Social Integration

Many of us use our phones to keep in touch with our family and friends via social networks. I think the N9 does this quite well, mainly with the integration of Social Networks throughout the OS. In addition to the dedicated apps, the ability to share to your networks straight through the gallery is very useful. Having your Facebook and Twitter feeds easily accessible via the Events homescreen is also a nice touch.

The ability to connect your contacts with their Social accounts, is at first a little tricky, as you can’t just “link” like you do in Symbian. You need to allow the network to add the contacts to your phone, then you have to manually merge their contact cards. The issue is that I personally prefer automation. Then again, when things are automatic, they generally tend to go wrong.

The only thing about having such deep social integration, is the management of these accounts. That’s where the Accounts app comes into it. The accounts app is a good way of managing the accounts you link with your phone, as well as adjusting their respective settings.

5) Multitasking

You’ll probably think I’m lying after seeing my terrible settings video, where the lag was actually painful to watch, but multitasking is quite good. As I’ve learnt, if you limit the number of resource hungry apps (Maps, Games, Streaming etc.), you should have no issues. I suggest enabling “swipe down to close” as it just makes it a lot easier.

The interface for multitasking is rather nice. I like the live thumbnails as it helps when you are loading a few webpages and want to see what’s ready first. It also just makes it that little bit nicer to use. It’s hard to explain, but for those that have used the phone, they know what I mean.

6) Calling

I’ve made quite a few calls on it already and so far it’s been pretty clear. When I have issues it has coincided with poor network coverage, so I believe it’s service and not the device. Not only do I hear the person on the other end well, but I’m yet to call someone who has had trouble hearing me. Like stated in my reviews, the only thing I’m disappointed about is a lack of smart dialing and video calling.

7) Camera

The camera has been better than expected. It does a great job in low light conditions and I’ll make sure I showcase some photo samples in the weeks to come. The ability to choose a manual focus point is the feature I like the most. Adds a little more professionalism in my opinion.

The video recording is implemented well. I like the fact that continuous auto focus is a lot more noticeable than on the N8 and the focus box is present during the entire time you record. The focus box is initially white and after it focus, turning blue. This is very helpful, especially when filming close-up videos (like phone reviews).

8 ) Sound Quality

Although I haven’t used it intensively for music playback, the sound quality seems to be good. It has depth and doesn’t sound tinny. The “Dolby Digital Plus” isn’t just a badge they put on the box, you can notice the difference. (Will compare audio with N8 soon.)

9) Screen

The first big difference for me was the screen size. It feels a lot bigger than the N8 and made it so much better for watching YouTube on my phone. The fact that it is bigger, also made it easier to type using the portrait QWERTY. (That and the fact, the buttons are bigger and the keyboard is set out better, removing redundant buttons.)

The screen is very clear and vibrant. A lot nicer than the N8. I know it’s not the best photo (used my N95), but you can still notice the difference. When I first turned the N9 one, and even today, a week later, I can’t get over how fake the app icons look. They are so crisp that, with the aid of the laminated screen, it looks painted on.

Even in direct sunlight, I find the N9′s display is still good. That is something I found a struggle with my N8. Too often I’d be under the sun and the screen was just way too hard to see. So far, I haven’t had this issue with my N9.

10) Text Input

I haven’t touched on this in any of my reviews so I thought I should give it a mention. Firstly, there is NO SWYPE and NO T9 ALPHANUMERIC input.(Just to clarify, Swype will be coming to the N9, just not yet, but you can find a demo of it by MicahelxHell on youtube.) For me, Swype is no big deal, but after years of Nokia’s, not having Alphanumeric is a bit daunting. Thankfully, the QWERTY is good enough (unlike Symbian). Like I mentioned above, bigger screen has meant easier typing, at least for me.

The ability to change your input language (once enabled) by simply swiping across, is pretty cool. Again, it brings the whole “swipe” gesture into the OS, aside from multitasking. Swiping on the QWERTY comes into play again, this time to remove the VKBD. I know in a video I mentioned it gets annoying sometimes, as it’s hard to remove the KBD. I was wrong. After a comment from one of our readers, I reviewed those Nokia Australia N9 videos, you simply swipe down, and it disappears. However, you need to give it a real flick, otherwise you’ll type something.

11) Issues

Although I absolutely love the phone, and would definitely recommend it to anyone. There are still things that I would like to see in future updates, as well as things that I think could have been done a little better.

The first being the use of the Front Facing Camera. Why is it there if it is not supported natively? Why is there no option in Camera to use the secondary camera? Why not include Video Calling in Skype? I know Peregrine, a Skype client, is introducing Video Calling in their next update, but in my opinion, it should be native.

I would like to see WLAN done a little bit better. I’ve had the issue of the network disconnecting, while my N8 stays connected with full strength. When I reconnect it, the network is fine. This has mainly been happening towards the end of the battery cycle, so it may be a power saving issue. (I do have power saving mode enabled automatically at 10%.) Still on the topic of WLAN connections, there has been an issue with automatically connecting to selected networks when within range. Again, not sure if it’s me or the FW.

Being a relatively “open source” OS, you would expect to have access to the phone’s system in some way. What I’m trying to say is Nokia should’ve included a File Manager. Although with developer mode, you can code your way into deleting, renaming or moving files etc., the majority of users don’t know how to do that. Thankfully, I’ve found an app that does what I want and quite well too. (Another one I’ll review for you.)

Not sure where I read it, but at one stage it was noted that the N9 would support USB OTG and HDMI Output. I wish this were true. Would’ve been a nice feature to have, but I know it’s not necessary.

12) Overall Judgement

Despite the few issues I’ve noted above, and those that may have come through in my videos, it’s still a very good phone. I like that the boot time is fast and I can start using the phone almost straight away without any lag (unlike N8). I believe there is a good compromise between features, speed and good design. For those who don’t mind spending that little bit extra I think the N9 is a suitable choice and, from personal experience, is a good upgrade from an N8.

I’m sure there is a lot more to cover but I think I’ve written WAY too much, and that’s the main stuff. Hopefully I can bring you some more reviews soon. Am currently deciding to do a Multitasking pressure test (based upon the outrage of lag on my settings vid), comparisons between N9 and N8 (camera, video, web) as well as an OS comparison (MeeGo Harmattan vs. Belle vs. iOS vs. Android) of various features. I promise I wont rush them so please give them a chance, and be patient as I have exams for the next few weeks, so they may take time. Thanks for reading and again, sorry for the shit reviews.

Michael

If you were a developer writing apps for Nokia’s Qt program over the last couple of days, you’d be remiss if you didn’t actually take a gander at the opportunity Nokia is providing to their obviously jilted devs. Nokia sent to following letter out to members of their Forum Nokia launchpad program with a message saying pretty much the following.

—Yea, we kinda did screw you over there guys, BUT we’re really trying to make up for it. If you don’t mind, we’ll send you a free E7 and our new Windows Phone device just as soon as we’re done making it. Just to make sure you don’t forever hate us and join another dev community, we’ll sweeten the deal by adding free tech support for a couple months and quality assessment for one app of your choice.

Personally, I think that while it is a great deal, the emotional nature of some individuals would probably preclude their ability to rationally look at the opportunities provided. In any case, it shows Nokia has realized that its actions have consequences and are moving quickly to mitigate them. In any case, we might be seeing some cool leaks on the way .  Stay tuned for my opinions of Windows Phone and what it means for Nokia’s ecosystem.

____

Post Merger.

Chris Davies from SlashGear (thanks to Yiannis for the heads up – via Engadget) is reporting that Nokia are giving developers free Nokia E7 and Nokia’s WP7 devices. There’s a memo that comes by way of Launchpad:

“Launchpad is Nokia’s mobile app development program, usually priced at €300 annually but currently free for the first year.”

SlashGear

Woah. It’s free to sign up and you get two devices?! Engadget commenters are saying they’re signing up for this now.

What’s interesting is that the memo specifically notes WP7. Not just “Windows Phone” that Nokia’s been careful to note, making the blogosphere think that Nokia’s going to skip WP7 possibly for WP7.5 or even WP8.

To assist you with your development activities in the near-term, we will ship one free Nokia E7 device to all program members. Additionally, we will send to you one free Nokia WP7 device, as soon as it becomes available.

In addition there’s 3 months free tech support with up to 10 tickets.

Do you know what would also be cool? Nokia E7 with WP7 (though upgraded screen res, maybe autofocus cam)

SOURCE: SlashGear via Engadget

Some of the key take-aways from his video are below in quotes (“) my comments are after the  hyphen (-)

“RF reception is outstanding” – being in a basement seemed not to hamper his ability to pick up T-Mobile 3G.

“Video recording is very good” – We’ve seen a bunch of videos available online and they’re all pretty darn good.

“Games play quite good on the N8″ – Seen quite a few demos of 3D games available and they’re pretty smooth while running.

“the missing podcast app”  - Obviously something Nokia have neglected even though there should be a free-ware  app available online. To add to that, where is a decent internet radio app eh Nokia?! Developers?!?

“The display looks great and touch works well” – Somewhat surprising but definitely a positive.

“The hardware is simply FANTASTIC and feels awesome in my hand” – Well that’s something we’ve heard time and again, I’ll have to get one in my hands before passing judgement on this however.

“The new Ovi Store is very good and I am buying apps from it” – This after vowing not to buy from the Ovi Store because it sucked so bad LOL , have to agree somewhat with him on that. The current incarnation of the store for S^1 devices, while much improved  on the original is not particularly fun to use or browse. Glad to see that’s changed. Now if only there was a greater selection. (Looks at lazy iPhone blinded developers.)

“I love that smart dialing is on the dialer” – I’ve seen it a couple times and it definitely looks nice. My only real criticism here is the lack of integration with the call log. Possible target for PR 1.1/2.0 firmware updates  please?

Also mentioned in the video is the great battery life on the

On to the negatives then

“The Calendar bites and needs work in future Symbian updates” – I agree that the UI for the calendar could definitely use some work. It is ADEQUATE at best, good to see the multiple calendar and Caldav support though.

“The software keyboard is OK, but a bit frustrating that prediction is poor and there is no portrait QWERTY” – I think everyone at Nokia probably realizes that the keyboard in both portrait and landscape could use some serious work.

First and foremost, the keyboard needs to hover and not cover the UI and entry fields. It’s rather cumbersome having to exit the keyboard and then re-enter it just to see what your friend said in the text you’re trying to reply to (4 taps and the associated pauses). Then there is the issue of only T9 in portrait, FIX THIS ASAP NOKIA.

While some (myself included) would find that T9 is faster, more accurate and easier to use with one hand, the OPTION to use a portrait keyboard that hovers is something that all of us would GREATLY appreciate. PR1.1 or earlier if possible please. That said, sources say that an English language portrait keyboard is indeed ready, just being held until other languages have been finished. Here’s to hoping for a pretty good prediction algorithm.

The iPhone and HTC Android devices are somewhat excellent in the regard.

As an addition, and I know this is beating a dead  horse, but please Nokia for the love of God push that browser update out ASAP. I’m rather underwhelmed by what I’ve seen thus far.

via

When the N8 was first unveiled a lot of people were left disappointed and questioned the choice of powerplant to power the  N8, there have been a lot of confusions and arguments between the media and now Nokia have confirmed that the N8 will  use the Broadcom BCM2727 GPU which according to Broadcom will

for ‘high-quality multimedia features for mobile phones and advanced media players while retaining long battery life’.

In this case, long battery life means up to three hours of 720p HD video capture on your Nokia N8. Anyway the N8 showed impressive GPU performance as reported way back when by Jay here

And here is a close up picture of the GPU

Thanks to Andre for the heads up

via finestphones.com

Phew, been away from the mobile world a bit to concentrate on the realms outside. Whilst I have my first batch of free time, I’m gonna recap on the Nseries LA event – the actual evening – before I continue the Nokia blog posts.

1: Journey to the Mansion:

Off the bus, onto Nokia Nseries buggies! These were equiped with GPS, and travelled across a very narrow, dangerous road with no side barriers so a missed GPS lock signal could have lead to our deaths.

They played the most overplayed song ever, Moby’s In My Heart.

The Nseries Mini:

Nseries Mansion:

Intro/Welcome thingy:

Nseries Box: I really like that white BH-501. Hmm, I wonder how the N95-8GB would look in iPod white?

WTF? LOL

Oh the wonder…N800s galore!

Multimedia Room

Checking out the competition, Big screen stylie

More TV Out and Web Browser:

Creatures of the Depp at the games room:

The Kitchen:

Served some wonderful mini kobe beef burgers, delish chicken, some odd cheese cup thing and a host of deserts.

In the time it took to take this shot, 10 burgers were swiped from the scene.

(Picture by robbi)

The Lounge

Just Outside, photo sessions:

Strike a pose!

The moody look

Relaxed:

Nseries GPS Equiped Ferrari

(Picture by robbi)

MobileBurners:

kloves2fly, Ade:

Robbi (Right)

Coolest way to order drinks, ever! N800 orders, barmaid arrives a couple of minutes later! No waiting in a queue, no pushing around at the bar ^_^

I want one of those shirts! lol

Clinging onto Big Daddy:

Donna, Moi and Darla!

The Pool

GPS table…I was actually trying to take a picture of the persistent low battery warning.

Press Conference with Product Managers

BL-6F apparently NOT fitting into N95

Oh, But it does.

Love that N95 8GB.

I thought I took way more photos than this. Everytime someone took a photo, I thought I took one also. You’ve probably more or less seen these shots already but here’s my perspective of it.

The night was a success, lol, for the majority of it it was really cool. Felt a bit deflated after a few things one I’ll mention being no product launches (N82, where art thou?).

Thoughtfix, Dan, was doing some fantastic dancing, can’t find any pics of clips though, but he certainly got the attention at the dance floor.

I met up GWAPZ and Kevlarman only on the bus back, lol, didn’t realise they were who they were. Kinda fell asleep aslo on the shoulder of Mobile-Review’s Eldar on the journey back. Feeling real tired now like I did on that night! haha! So, pics of remaining WOMWorld attendies will be up on the next post.