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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steven75 - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
It combines IM, only missing AIM, GChat, Yahoo--you know, the services people actually use.Missing youtube client, missing ability to open PDF files. Are you aware that both Android and iOS can do this stuff out of the box?
Reflex - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
MSN/Live is the most used chat client in the world, and its not paticularly close. Facebook is likely second by now, and it builds that in as well. Yahoo was right after MSN/Live a few years ago, I don't know where it is today, however MSN and Yahoo interoperate, you can add your Y! contacts directly to your MSN/Live contact list.AIM is dying. GChat has a substantial userbase, but its not at the level of others. Thier bases are pretty well covered in that regard.
Youtube worked out of the box for me. Not sure why you think it dosen't support it. Plus there are tons of third party clients available for free as apps if you don't like the built in player or the custom one that HTC and others ship.
Adobe Reader is available in the app store, I have it on mine.
Spivonious - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
Exactly. Youtube works for me with no extra apps. The Adobe Reader app is free in the marketplace, although I have yet to open a PDF file on the phone. Of course, Office docs can be opened with no problems, which is 99% of what I want to open.I'll admit, this is my first smartphone, but I have used my Dad's iPhone, and have played with my sister's Android phone. WP7 is easier to use, and does way more out-of-the-box.
465thGTG - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
Android can't open PDF files out of the box unless it has an app installed to do so, just like WP7. And MSN and Facebook chat are the two most popular chat services in the world. Finally, it's missing a YouTube client only because Google doesn't permit Microsoft to include one out of the box. It's not a big deal though. Several great YouTube clients are just a couple clicks away in the Marketplace.Thermogenic - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
Google wouldn't allow them to do Youtube properly, unfortunately.augustofretes - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
It is a really weak ecosystem, the number of apps may not be 0, but it is low compared to Android and iOS, and more importantly, the quality of the apps is a lot lower.I felt WP could catch, perhaps surpass, Android and iOS by now, but I was wrong, iOS is still strong, and Android moved a lot, many WP advantages were eliminated with ICS (and that's its real competition: Android, not iOS).
I own both a Galaxy S II running ICS (CM9) and an Omnia 7, although WP7 was a lot less uglier than GB, and is objectively good, ICS is really, really good, I no longer miss anything when using the S II instead of my Omnia 7.
465thGTG - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
Ah how we forget. Android didn't really go anywhere in its first year either. Building a completely new platform takes time.augustofretes - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link
The state of the market is completely different, now you can get a modern smartphone with Android or iOS on almost any carrier on almost all countries.Back then the iPhone was only available on a handful of carriers and countries.Moreover, by now, Android had Eclair and the Droid, which pushed Android forward, as likeable as the Lumia 800 is, I highly doubt it is or will play the same role as the Droid.
But will see, hopefully WP will improve and will become a solid third (and hopefully it will stop being one or two hardware generations behind).
R3MF - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
nice hardware, but as the owner of an N9 i feel i got the whole package, not merely some quality hardware as is the case with the Lumia 800.beginner99 - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
bigger and 20 g more than the competition with same hardware. I carry my phone in the pocket and hence size and weight matter a lot...