Nokia Lumia 800 Review - Nokia's Brave New Foray into WP7
by Brian Klug on January 4, 2012 7:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Nokia
- windows phone 7
- Mobile
- WP7
- Lumia
- Lumia 800
Display
The Lumia 800 uses a WVGA (800x480) 3.7” Super AMOLED display which of course comes with RGBG PenTile. The reality is that Windows Phone actually feels like it’s designed around AMOLED to some extent, so this isn’t nearly as big of a concern as it would be otherwise. In fact, WP7 does take advantage of AMOLED’s light-emitting nature to display as much black as possible unless you change the background theme, but anyhow onto the display itself.
Because we can’t set the brightness manually in the settings UI, we have to rely on the Low/Medium/High presets that are defined already. There’s actually a way to set the brightness manually inside ##634# but it isn’t clear whether these settings persist after exiting. As usual, we’ve measured brightness and white point - AMOLED blacks are literally zero thanks to the light-emitting nature of that display technology.
I find that the Lumia 800 isn’t as dark as the numbers would have you believe, though it could benefit from going a bit brighter. No doubt Nokia has chosen to err on the conservative side to conserve some battery life.
| Lumia 800 Display Metrics | |||
| Brightness Level | Black Brightness (nits) | White Brightness (nits) | White Point (K) |
| High | 0 | 196.1 | 5854 |
| Medium | 0 | 44.8 | 6043 |
| Low | 0 | 11.6 | 6117 |
The curved nature of the Corning Gorilla Glass display is another thing to discuss as well. It looks great and isn’t curved so much that it gets in the way of dragging things around on the display or interacting. Of course, at the most extreme viewing angles (as you approach a critical angle) you do see some total internal reflection effects, but that ends up being literally viewed from the extreme side or bottom.
As usual I’ve also put together an outdoor viewing gallery in addition to some different viewing angles of the display for your perusal. Nokia’s ClearBlack display helps things here, as they’ve placed a circular polarizer between the touch layer and the front display glass to eliminate some reflections.
I feel as though WP7 is one of the first UIs that’s designed with some of the AMOLED/PenTile display guidelines taken to heart, though there’s still more that WP7 could do to leverage some of AMOLEDs unique strengths. Little functions like displaying the time or status even when the phone is locked are things that other Nokia phones with AMOLED have done for a while that really made sense and served an important purpose that aren’t done in WP7 quite yet.
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465thGTG - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
Sounds like you aren't thoroughly familiar with Windows Phone. As far as performance goes, my Titan consistently feels faster and more fluid than my Galaxy S II, which has ungodly specs. Benchmarks may paint one picture, but real world use paints a completely different one.Speaking of the Titan, I can't believe Brian didn't mention it at all. Its camera is a clear step above both the Focus S and Lumia 800.
doubledeej - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link
What evidence do you have for WP7 needing dual core? My HTC HD7 runs circles around my coworker's Galaxy S II with a lower clock speed and half of the number of cores.WP7 renders graphics using the GPU so everything feels fast and fluid. Android doesn't even attempt to do that until 3.0 (which isn't available on phones). ICS adds it, but not many models are getting that yet.
AMOLED is beautiful. Fully saturated colors and infinite contrast ratio. I'd take an AMOLED at half of the rated brightness of an LCD any day. The AMOLED screens in production aren't too dim. But some of the LCDs can get too bright.
french toast - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link
I agree AMOLEDS are awesome!, i havnt seen a modern one but i saw my mates HTC desire when that came out and it was cool, if they have improved since then then i want one!I havnt used WP7 so i cant comment on responsivness, but what i will say is that multi cores devices actually bring the power consumption DOWN, whilst making something that can be multithreaded eg web browsing even smoother, it also gives games developers power to make better games, the GPU on the old snapdragon is weak, so while the OS may run smooth thanks to miccrosofts supreme optimizations,you cant tell me you wouldnt want better more powerfull engine inside, that gives better battery life as well as better games would you?
Either way, WP7 whilst clearly very slick, is selling like ice creams in antartica, and i think this has to do with the pecieved out of date specs, like NFC duel core LTE etc, people want the lastest gadgets with the same stuff there friends have..
Microsoft MUST start delivering some up to date hardware.
LB-ID - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
Brian, just FYI. Article's last page, paragraph three:"at least min my mind"
I believe that should be: "at least in my mind".
Thanks for the article and analysis!
Brian Klug - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
Fixed!-Brian
Brian Klug - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
Thanks for all the edits/corrections everyone, I've made a number of changes (all those listed here). :)-Brian
comomolo - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
I understand Nokia doesn't want the N9 to succeed or their Windows Phone strategy is doomed. But this is an independent news site, isn't it? Where's the N9 in the comparison charts? Where's the N9 review? Comparing the Lumia with the phone it inherited the design from (the N9) is only logical. Hiding it from your readers is not very professional.Yes, Nokia decided to "kill" Meego (that's just a public statement; it's obviously their "plan B" and will be the basis for their upcoming "low end" Meltemi), but for a whole lot of people who couldn't care less about "ecosystems" (which is just a new euphemism for "lock-in"), its applications offer is pretty nice. In some areas, like telephony, is much better than anything else on the market, and because it's fairly open, lots of hacks and community apps and add-ons are being developed every day. Honestly, unless you lack any knowledge of technology (and then, why would you want a smartphone?) the N9 is currently offering much better value than the Lumia or any other Windows Phone 7 device.
Belard - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
I'm looking at jumping from Android to WPx... as it is, I am running the free WP7 Launcher on my Android that makes using the phone so much easier than the default Android one.I see postings from WP7 owners wishing the titles would rotate with the phone (As we know, not even iOS and Android does this)...
But there is the cool thing, the WP7 Launcher for Android *DOES* rotate the tiles - which not only looks cool, its handy and allows you to read the titles. Of course the wide titles can't rotate, but this function would SO be worth it.
Voldenuit - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
Thanks for the great review!Minor nitpick, though. The F number by convention is reported as a reciprocal when used with lower case 'f', and as a normal number when used with upper case 'F'. It's just one of those weird notation conventions in photography.
Example:
f/2.0 == F2.0 == an aperture with a diameter half the focal length of the lens.
Camera geek with N8 in hand ;).
Solidstate89 - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
If they could get that rumored Lumia 900 on Sprint with the 4.3" screen, I would finally be able to switch to a pure software keyboard. The keyboard WP7 uses is utterly fantastic, from its sound to its autocorrect. It's juts great. However on the 3.6" screen on my Arrive, it's a bit cramped even when in landscape mode. However something as large as 4.3" is certainly enough to make me move.