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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Thermogenic - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
The polycarbonate shell gives it the weight. That's one of the main selling features of the phone, but it's not for everyone.jagor - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
It seems you have the High and Low levels switched in the Display Metrics table. If so, and max brightness is just 196 nits for the High level, you probably should use the High brighness level in the battery tests for an apples to apples comparison.Brian Klug - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
Fixed!-Brian
zvadim - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
I find USB ports on top to be a PIA when using phone in a windshield/dash mount.ReySys - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
Finally no thanks to Microsoft or Nokia Marketing or Carrier in Mexico I´m going to have mine thru Expansys Unlocked! Really a lot to do to market WP7 worldwide! More than 20 models last year but only LG Optimus arrive to Mexico thru Telcel! I decide to wait to mature a little more... My decision was right Optimus has Battery problems. Still Ipm going to buy an, Thinkpad W, Asus Transformer Prime & maybe at last an iphone 5! Sorry IT Administrator & Consultor need to test & from an opinion. Already have 2 blackberrys! I before all of them a Dopod 900! Still functioning! Long wait!Braumin - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
I was hoping for more, I know it is a bit misguided but the opening paragraph said it would look into the new features that Mango brought to WP7. They were barely even talked about.I understand that Apple and Android are dominant, so when they sneeze out a tiny update they get an entire article just for the update. This was just a gloss over of WP7.5. Anandtech should have given it a review on its own.
I know Brian doesn't use WP7 as his smartphone, but quips like this bug me "It’s is telling about the functionality still missing from the core of WP7 that you need to go download a YouTube and Adobe Reader application from the market to use those things"
Well, you don't HAVE to download a YouTube app - you COULD just go to the youtube web page. Is it telling about the functionality still missing from the core of iOS 5 that you still have to install a facebook app? Facebook is fairly well integrated into WP7, and so is twitter. I know it is still missing things, but these are the items that should have come up in the Mango review which just never happened.
steven75 - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
That part about downloading Adobe Reader does sound pretty behind the times to me. Only Microsoft has an OS that can't natively read PDF files (that goes for the desktop too).Braumin - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
I agree about Adobe Reader - sure am glad it is FINALLY going to be native in Windows 8.465thGTG - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
Android can't natively read PDF files without a third party app either, but I don't see what the big deal is regardless. If you try to open a PDF file on a WP7 device it asks if you want to install a PDF reader from the Marketplace and proceeds to do that for you. Painless.Brian Klug - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
I wanted to spend a lot more time codifying why (for me at least) I think that WP7 needs more before it really feels as powerful as Android or iOS. We've been big fans of WP7 for a while now (I was at MIX10 when it launched, and we covered the WP7 launch) but I still can't shake the feeling that it should be more at this point.Codifying that was my original objective for part of this article, and obviously some of that didn't really make it though in the end. I use WP7 now and then, but I'll be first to admit it isn't nearly as much as Android and iOS.
-Brian