Nokia Lumia 800 Sim-free Windows Smartphone 16GB - Matte Black

Ok I was being a luddite, my previous phone was the original Google Android phone and although I still rate it, it was getting a little long in the tooth. So I was due an upgrade and decided on the Nokia Lumia 800, Nokia always made good reliable phones so it had to be OK didn't it?

In short yes, first off from a purely tactile point of view the phone feels right, its not massive but it sits comfortably in the hand, the buttons are in easy to reach places and there isn't a plethora of controls dotted all over. The included case is a soft touch rubber skin that clips over easily and feels like part of the phone. So OK on to setting it up, it imported all of my facebook friends as contacts but due to the age of my old phone couldn't handle the bluetooth contact exchange, so I had to add a few numbers manually, no big deal, but you can't add a number to a contact off facebook you have to add as a new contact then join the profile, this is simple enough but its an extra step that seems a little pointless.
So on to using the phone, ok the interface is really good, simple direct and very very easy to use, the tiles and a responsive touch screen make zipping about a pleasure and really fast, typing on the on screen keyboard works a treat, even with big sausage fingers like mine :) Some others are saying that as an MP3 player it doesn't work, well to be fair the speaker on the phone is a little quiet, but I use mine bluetoothed up to a motorcycle helmet and it works a treat, there are plenty of options on how to play your tunes and you can add your own playlists.
So would I recommend it? Yes its all there, decent battery life (I have had no problems at all) camera is decent (but I would take a DSLR if i wanted any proper photos) it is all there as a sleek good looking easy to use package, and a quick mention of nokia drive here, its Nokias own Sat Nav software, has a range of free to download maps and voices works very very well and updates quickly. The single core processor in the phone makes browsing, watching videos and everything a joy, always fast and no lag in performance. The windows operating system is light years away from any other windows mobile stuff I have used in the past and for a change a pleasure. My biggest gripe is Zune, I have never used iTunes and hate those software packages that try to take ove your PC, Zune is one, why can't I have a simple drag and drop interface? But although i dislike the integratedness of Zune, its not terrible to use just an annoyance but it works and it has loads of features that I will never use so thats why it looses a star for Zune. On the whole very very impressed with the phone, very well built, light, very good looking (I have the black one BTW) the screen is sharp, bright and clear. Apart from a couple of small niggles I have I am happy to be stuck with it for the next 18 months till my contact runs out :) Can't say better than that.

Had the Lumia for quite some time now (March 2012?), which I feel is enough to finally cast judgement.

When I first had it, I had newphoneitus and would kill the battery in a matter of hours, as you would any smartphone. It was desperately bad however. After about 3 updates from Nokia life became easier and I'm happy with it now. It would still be nice to have a bit of feedback from the OS (not an app) to tell me what is eating the juice. There's little indication on the screen in regards what is switched on and I have managed to leave the Bluetooth turned on after leaving the car so another improvement required. I actually think that's my gripes over.

I came to WP7 from Android. My HTC Desire went awol on a drunken way home. It was a decent phone but the OS had turned into a sluggish dog - jerky animations, reboots aplenty etc. The Lumia is running as smoothly as the day I picked it up. Silky! Regular reboots required? Nope. I think the only time it has been rebooted by me is on a plane. I do remember seeing it reboot/recover itself once too. Not sure what that was about? All in all, a very solid OS.

Applications. I see it everywhere that WP doesn't have the gallery of Apps that Android or IOS has. Can I just say, GOOD! Trying to find the perfect app to do something simple was a nightmare! Too many options. With WP, the choice is curtailed and life is easy. I do wish Microsoft would get iron fist at this crucial time and vet out any disfunctional detritus that appears on their market (like it has on other platforms).
I'm not heavily into apps so I'm not dwelling on them too much. I don't avidly go looking for something that I don't need. I wait for a circumstance where I do find one maybe handy, and then go looking.
Marketplace usage: I needed a timer for cooking, so I went to the Marketplace and searched for 'Timer'. At the time, it only threw up about 20 results but now it's much more populated. Still, it's easy to find a well reviewed solution. I ended up with the excellent, SuperTimer. 4 asynchronous timers, perfectly matching my requirement.
I needed an interval timer for the exercise bike, so I put in 'interval timer' and from a choice of 20 odd, I ended up with the simply brilliant Push It!. So simple and so solid. Improved my achievements in the gym, no end. This app almost kills me!

Nokia Drive has replaced my old TomTom as a nav device. There are times when it can be a bit of a pig to find places(Thornbury powerstation springs to mind) because the search just hangs but there are always get-arounds that you'll discover (use Bing for instance). I still, as I did with TomTom, apply something called 'common sense' - I ignore it until I'm within 20 miles! Top tip. For an integrated option, it's neat though. It doesn't look as pretty as Google's but achieves the same purpose.

The camera has been excellent and the integrated ability to snap and upload to various social networks is amazing. Click, share, append optional message, upload. Done - Gordon Ramsey would be proud. In fact social networking is a very key feature of the phone. I'm not one for telling the world what I'm doing every second of the day but the Lumia has definitely caused me to up my Facebook activity - without ever going on Facebook! There is a Facebook app, but I rarely use it. The OS itself neatly takes care of all I need to achieve for me. Facebook (+chat), Messenger, Skype and Twitter all coming in one stream.

I have come to love my Lumia, I admit it. When I'm out and about, the ignorant Apple mob scoff and laugh (because it isn't an ehphone therefore uncool); the Android gang take a look then arrogantly claim it's rubbish as they reboot their phone. Persuading them that WP is actually good will be an uphill struggle because of course, it's Microsoft therefore must be rubbish, right? For me, fact is fact, the Lumia has given me no grief and still carry's out my day to day tasks effortlessly. Whilst out with the other OS phones, the Lumia has left them for dust in achieving what have become menial tasks.
On the battery life thing I offer this. A few weeks back, we did the Circle line pub crawl. Midday kick-off, batteries full, navigation on to find the first pub then off, 3G off, WiFi off. 12 hours, 3 phone calls, quite a bit on WhatsApp (3G on for uploads), 10 flash photos, 27 FB Check-in's (as evidence) later and the Lumia did actually shock me as it was still at 50% on the battery. iPhones dead, S3's on the last legs. I don't know but perhaps this was only because the others were phone fiddling more than me that day?

On the build quality, I can think of no other fitting way to comment on it other than if the Lumia 800 were an animal, it would be a Honey Badger. Cute to some, ugly to others, and either way, hard as nails. Drop it if you like, Lumia won't care! try scratching it if you like, Lumia won't care....

Why am I reviewing the phone now? Because I want the new Lumia 920 (Chuck Norris) - desperately. There could be a mass of 800's about to hit the market and felt it necessary to warn others that they may actually like it!

Note: I am finding that the Whatsapp program is a battery killer! Across platforms it seems to not be a patch on how good it was when it first appeared. There are much better alternatives available but unfortunately the masses are tied to Whatsapp now.

Coming from a Samsung Galaxy S II and being a lover of everything Android I wasn't too sure what to expect but I needed a new phone and I wasn't keen on spending so much money on an S II what with the S III out now...so I decided to try out Windows Phone and not being a HTC fan I ended up looking toward Nokia!

The specs on this phone don't look too appealing if your choosing between the Lumia 800 and any other super-expensive phone out there but Windows Phone 7.5 takes care of that pretty easily, there's no apps sitting silently in the background eating the battery down to nothing in a mere 9 hours like on Android, there's no random glitches or screen freezes, app closures or WiFi randomly not working requiring a reboot for anything to happen again....

The Tiles feature is simply epic and navigating this phone takes a small bit to get used to, the integration of FB and Twitter is ingenious but not annoying, it just works. If you don't have Facebook then remove the ''People'' tile from your start screen and you're set! Anything can be added to your start screen, a favourite song, a contact, any app, pictures(I believe, I haven't taken any yet to try) you can also pin playlists and email accounts for easy access!
There's different colours to choose from which are really vibrant (I suggest always using the Dark theme as the Light one looks kind of...sickly) I found myself switching colours almost daily to match my mood, this will be added to with the upcoming ''7.8'' update the 800 is meant to be getting!

The phone out of the box simply requires an email address and your Micro Sim and our ready to go. Note: To anyone (like me) wishing to use XBOX Companion/Smartglass on their phones and wanting to access their Xbox LIVE Gamertags on their Lumias, if you are confused on the phone's start-up about what email to use, e.g I use a separate email address for my main email account and my xbox, have your initial email the one you use for XBOX Live and after that simply add your Hotmail account(s) that way you can fully enjoy the phone and take full advantage of Smartglass. Which is an epic feature that works SO well! You can add Gmail, Yahoo! and any other email account imaginable and pin it to your Start screen and it will update instantly on your screen if you've received new mail.

The Lumia simply works, and works well. Installing apps is a dream. The screen is unbelievably responsive yet I never make a mistake and my big fingers type very quickly with minimal mistakes!
Contacts Transfer went down a treat and I was ready to go with all my contacts on the phone and linked to their respective FB accounts in about 5 minutes.

Windows Phone is a relatively new player compared to iOS and Android so the app market is slightly bare...in saying that there's all the ones you're used to, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Weather Apps, Games and Adobe Reader...there's no YouTube 'App' persay, it's more a glorified bookmark but YouTube's mobile page works remarkably well and signing in, commenting and favoriting are all simple tasks so it shouldn't be a problem for anybody! There's also a pretty sweet app worth mentioning ''Ask Ziggy'' is Windows Phone's answer to Siri!
YouTube videos play very well and the quality is pretty great for a phone and I've managed to watch full TV show episodes on it without any bother. There's a paid app on the market names ''SuperTube'' it's paid but you can, like almost every paid app ''try'' it out with seemingly 0 restrictions on usage, the app plays and downloads YouTube videos which is a nice touch!

Music is definitely something a lot of people care about, so most phone's that fall short in this area normally don't do very well. The Lumia comes with Zune Player which looks great and provides basic player info including a skip button on the Lock Screen. Music is transferred using Zune which I'll touch on in a bit. The external speakers are lacking but plug in a headset/earphones and you're set!
The best music feature on the Lumia is definitely the ''Nokia Music'' app, letting you stream music, have offline playlists and the ability to make playlists of your own. I've already discovered a ton of new amazing bands thanks to this feature. And it's free!

Like I said above, you can add Music, photos and Videos to your phone(and from phone to PC) via Zune on your computer. My pc has the worst spec but runs Zune smooth and efficiently and synchronises content with ease. This is also how you update your phone's firmware and anything else you can think of. It easily beats the likes of Kies and iTunes for ease of use and responsiveness.

Browsing on the Lumia 800, like any phone isn't preferable(for me anyway), but for checking random things like bus times or a wiki page or whatever it's pretty nice! Responsive, easy to use, fast, efficient and there's no clutter. As with everything else on Windows Phone it simply works and works well.

The phone comes with some nice extras from Nokia like Drive, Maps and Music which I've mentioned. The ability to download my country's map for offline use is a GODSEND! I always get lost and my S2 has died on too many occasions from data usage while I was trying to un-lose myself..this app will one day save me a ton of trouble!
I haven't yet used Nokia Drive but I'm sure it's just as good.

I don't know what else to say so I'll cover a few other nice things I discovered, holding on the Windows Logo on the bottom of the phone brings up all your recent apps for quicker orientation to the things you need, moving your finger down from the top of the screen slightly brings up useful icons like WiFi, signal strength and your phone's current profile and battery meter. The phone comes with a cover you should definitely use, it fits like a glove and no 3rd party cover will do half as good. If you are battery conscious like me don't just press the windows icon! Tap the hell out of the back button until your right back at your Start screen and feel safe knowing nothing on your phone is working in the background!

I think that's everything, I probably forgot something really stupid and blatant but yes...that's a pretty decent review by me for your pleasure, if your unsure of Android or Windows Phone hopefully this helps make up your mind. This phone looks DAMN good and feels that way as well. :D
If you have the extra cash get yourself an 820 or 920 as they'll be supported for longer with updates. If that's something that would worry you. If not the Lumia 800 is your phone!