Featuring a 3.7" 480 x 800 pixel touchscreen display, an 8 megapixel camera with HD video recording, and a 1.4 GHz single core CPU with 512MB of RAM, the Nokia Lumia 800 is pitched very much at the midrange smartphone market against some very tough competition.
If the Lumia 800 looks familiar, it is because the design approach used is almost the same as the Nokia N9, and indeed the physical dimensions are identical, except that the Lumia has a slightly smaller display and a set of buttons on the front. The N9 is now shipping, and reviewers have been enthusiastic about the build quality and the very beautiful display, and it is likely that the Lumia 800 will share those qualities.
The display is a slightly curved AMOLED panel with ClearBlack technology. The edges of the display look like they blend into the case. The N9 demonstrated that this particular type of screen is very bright with high contrast, and the screen design makes the image appear to "float" which should be particularly impressive with the tile-based Windows interface.
The unibody design is a pleasingly minimalistic affair which is tapered at the top and bottom with some ancillary controls on the side. On the back is a metal plate with the Nokia logo and an 8 megapixel camera, and apart from the flash near the camera the rest of the back is completely smooth. The camera itself has Carl Zeiss optics and is capable of 720p video capture, although one thing notably missing from the Lumia 800 is a front-facing camera for video calls.
As far as Nokia is concerned, the biggest development here is the software. The Lumia 800 runs Windows Phone 7.5, codenamed "Mango", the latest update of Microsoft's new Windows Phone 7 OS that debuted last year. Mango's user interface is completely different to anything else on the market, using active tiles that display useful information (such as the number of email messages or the weather) rather than dumb icons such as those on the iPhone, Android or Symbian devices. This different look and feel permeates the whole operating system, and it makes Windows Phone feel very much more modern than rivals.. at least on the surface.
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