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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doubledeej - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link
But Android customer satisfaction is horrible. Consumers might think they want it, but they change their mind after they've used it.WP7 has the highest customer satisfaction right now.
crispbp04 - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link
You're too stupid to see the context of my comment, albeit I should have put a semi-colon instead of a period after "the minority of consumers want android". Read the next sentence. Dipshit. Only technogeek nerds WANT Android.Nataku - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link
its ok, let the fanboys struggle with that os, my sis switched to lumia 800 because she's fed up with the two android phone she hadnote on consumer (that aren't geeks like us) purchases, they either listen to a friend or get pushed around by the sale people, the rest is marketting (eg. iphone) so no such thing as "every one wants android" crap...
solipsism - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
So your idea of saving Nokia is to make every Nokia phone run Android so it has to compete with every other OEM using Android and has an ecosystem that appeals to only cheap, profitless devices or geeks, instead of going after the profitable markets by creating a quality and unique experience Nokia can control.WP7 is their best chance for survival. It's late to the game but WP7 is a brilliant OS, the second best mobile OS and development platform on the market today after iOS/Xcode.
As David Pogue said, It's only downfall is that "it's not popular because it's not popular." Another year could change all that and both Nokia and MS have the money and talent to hold on for many years looking for their opportunity.
Death666Angel - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
Seems to me that most WP7 phones ship for a lot less money than Android hardware does. So I don't know why the margins would be so small. As fas as I know, WP7 also costs licensing whereas Android is free (in theory, MS still gets money for it from some manufacturers).Use whatever floats your boat, but don't think any one of them is superior in their own right. They are not.
davepermen - Wednesday, January 11, 2012 - link
If this would have been what consumers wanted, why was nokia going down so hard?Exactly
He saves their asses right now. Those N9 fans are loud on internet geek forums and discussions. They are not enough to make them survive, though.
WP7 is a very geeky os, one that you could love if you moved beyond "omg they changed their plans to survive they're SO uncool".
and i'm glad they did NOT went the android route. if you want android, there are already enough options. They need to have something that differenciates them from the masses, without the actual investement into building something on their own that is different.
465thGTG - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
Hmm... as a long time iOS and Android user I find WP7 very fun and interesting. To each his own I guess.davepermen - Wednesday, January 11, 2012 - link
WP7 is an interesting os by itself, too. And yes, alive, unlike the N9.abhicherath - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
this is really,really pretty....The N9 was rather prettier though.BTW could anybody tell me why exactly did elop ditch meego.It was functional,zippy and i would take it over mango given the choice...the only thing it lacked was a good ecosystem,ah well..
R.I.P MeeGo.
465thGTG - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
Turns out ecosystems aren't easy to come by.