I have always say that when come to the mobile hardware devices,Nokia is the best in the business rivaled only with Apple. Their biggest weakness has been the software part. And as it goes, if you can’t beat them, join them. At long last Nokia has something that could enable them to compete with others. oooh they call it “first real Windows phone”. Nokia Lumia 800. Probably they are right because majority of current WP7 phones have been full of hardware issues and i can’t remember any existing great Windows phone.
And with this we can now say we have three strong operating system and the battle ahead will be interesting..ooops i forgot BlackBerry
Basically it is N9 incarnated . Although from outside the Lumia 800 is N9 look alike, on the inside they are world apart. The 800 is running Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system, instead of the N9’s MeeGo. Shame that Nokia made N9 just a few months before the release of Lumia 800..coz at this point we might as well say R.I.P N9.
But whatever it is, it is great to see Nokia back to a position where it can compete with other mobile phone manufacturers in the smartphone space. Seriously, for sometime after using any android phone, no matter how basic it is like Ideos, you don’t want to touch some of the most expensive Nokia smartphones like E7 , N8. Although i still want them to make N8 running on windows, when comes to design aspect and the camera, N8 is awesome.
Nokia Lumia 800 is powered by a Snapdragon chipset with a single-core Scorpion CPU and 512MB of RAM. It offers 16GB of built-in storage and with their daddy Microsoft ready to give you 25GB of free cloud storage. That is a total of 41GB.
The design is quite something with vivid colors (cyan, magenta and black) .It has one-touch social network access, easy grouping of contacts, integrated communication threads and Internet Explorer 9. It features a 3.7 inch AMOLED ClearBlack curved display blending seamlessly into the reduced body design, and a 1.4 GHz processor with hardware acceleration and a graphics processor.
Camera
Something i always look for, is a camera on the phone. Although i am not a photographer and i don’t see myself being one soon, taking pictures is fast becoming my hobby. Nokia has track record of camera phones and should this come close to what they have in N9 then users will have some good times. . The Nokia Lumia 800 contains an instant-share camera experience based on Carl Zeiss optics, HD video playback. 8MP..
It is a shame that there is no front camera on this phone…mmmh did they forget?
Windows
The interface of Windows OS is made up various tiles on the homescreen that display live information about the weather, the news, your contacts and other info. The latest Windows Mango has proper multitasking function which enabled the user to run numerous apps at once. The OS might still lag behind Android and iOS but even those ones had to be tweaked before they reach where they are now. Expect windows to get better and better with time and more so when they start getting developers to do their things on the platform.
The just announced Nokia Lumia 800 will begin shipping in November to select markets, for around €420, approximately Ksh.59,442, if Kenya Shillings will still have its legs to stand up to some of these world major currencies .
Nokia Lumia 710
As always Nokia do things in doubles , actually this time in triples. Announced too is Lumia 710 which has been mentioned by the insiders as affordable. May be , it is priced at €270 (around Ksh.38,209). Lumia 710 has 3.7-inch screen with 800 x 480-pixel resolution. Comes with five-megapixel auto-focus camera with an LED flash.
Features
- -1.4GHz processor
- -8GB of user storage memory and
- 512MB of RAM.
- 3G up to HSDPA,
- WiFi and Bluetooth,.
- Size 119 x 62.4 x 12.5mm and weighs 125.5g.
Developing World
Having said that, Nokia should now think of the very cheap smartphone for the developing world. Yes, Series 40 has been good but it is does make sense anymore buying any Nokia phone going for around Ksh.10K while you can get Android device at Ksh.8K in Kenya. If Nokia want to compete especially in Kenyan market then, they have to come up with windows phone retailing at around Ksh.10k to Ksh.15K to counter the popularity of Ideos and Samsung Galaxy Mini.
I noted the pricing of these phones are sensible, and Nokia stopped the mistake of building some high end devices without Autofocus. However, with the introduction of windows phone, external storage flew out of the window. I mean, no SD cards, no USB on the go, no HDMI out….bla bla bla. When Nokia switched to windows it changed enemies, now having HTC to beat, lets see what it does businesswise as compared to HTC products like EVO and Sensation range, remember they did not do much to windows OS as opposed to what android phones are done, skinning. HTC can rival Nokia with hardware.
True, but i think this was a new territory for Nokia hence the missing things you have listed. And you know they ship many phones , so expect them to be working on the new ones already. As for HTC reviling Nokia in Hardware, i am yet to be convinced on that but I agree new direction new enemies
chwash you know me…i have never been a fan of nokia..but this has been a game changer for me…I am definately getting a nokia phone..and i will be proud of one :D Go team Nokia and crash android :)
kachwanya, nice quick review. where (& when) can i buy one of these phones in kenya?? every phone dealer i talk to seems to have never heard of these phones.