My final words

Windows Phone certainly is a promising OS, but for now it's lacking the feature I use mostly in Android: quick shortcuts for data connections. The dropdown notification menu has become quite popular, as both Symbian Belle (nowadays just Nokia Belle) and iOS adopted it. If Nokia wants to attract Android users to the WP camp, they have to add more customization possibilities as well as cut down the limitations a notch. I think it's just ridiculous that you can't even send files through bluetooth. I sure hope bluetooth file transfer is added soon, at least.

Microsd cards are another thing not supported in WP. When the users switch phones, they want as seamless as possible transition to the new phone, and by simply shoving the microsd card full of your stuff to the new phone, what's the easier way? Another matter that rises up in my list is the mass memory mode and the lack of USB OTG support. Having a mass memory mode and access to your photos, music or other files on a flash drive would add quite a lot of extra value and purposes for the phone.

There's a long way to go to appeal the hard boiled Android users, but for iOS users, Windows Phone is a nice alternative if they'd fancy a change. Both operating systems have similiar limitations and smoothness. Only the application charge is still growing to shine.

Small details on the phone

Not only the big things affect to the user experience. Even the finest details have their own weight.

As you know I switched to the Windows Phone operating system from Android for two weeks. My first impressions on the operating system were out of this world. The smoothness and usability of the phone were beyond anything I knew. The UI is well designed and simple to use. You can access a lot of content with just a single swipe in an application.

I come from Android. The well known operating system of endless customization possibilities and hardly any limitations. The Windows Phone soon started feeling boring. You can't set a background to the start screen to make the phone look like yours. You can set a background on the lockscreen, however. Still, there are not many ways to make your Windows Phone look like yours. The only way to change the looks of the start screen is to change the tile color, where you only have the predefined colors. You can also change the background to white, but using the black background saves battery on the Lumia 800 thanks to the AMOLED display.

Shortcuts to mobile network and WiFi are badly needed. Having to always navigate to the settings, scroll and look for the setting is way too complicated considering all of the other functions are way more easily accessible. I like to turn off the internet for the night to prevent any interference because of some silly e-mails. Saving battery by turning the connections off is smart too, especially when I go somewhere where I know there are no WiFi connections I could use. Searching for access points would just consume the battery unnecessarily.

Yeah, Windows Phone's main highlight is centered on the internet functions, the social media. Switching off the internet would seize the flow of new information and updates. Well, there are people who check when they want to know if there's something new, and based on my experience of the battery life on the Lumia 800, I was kind of forced to save as much battery as possible. Now that I switched back to my S II the battery life is noticeably longer. After 8-9 hours of usage I was still standing strong at around 60 % or more.

The Lumia 800 had a battery problem caused by a software bug, and I don't know if the fix was already applied on the phone I had. I received an update during my trial, but the battery life even after that wasn't too good.

Weird behavior

The phone switched itself off two times. The first time was at school when it was suddenly off when I picked it up from the table. Second time was when I had plugged it to the charger with around 15 % of battery left. When the battery is dead on the phone, it charges it with a battery icon on the display, and when there's enough charge it will boot the phone automatically. It didn't happen, so it wasn't because of the battery being dead.

Overall opinion

I really liked the phone. E-mail was easy and simple to use and the UI is very nice. The browser works really well, even though it is quite slow. The text isn't of the same size all around the UI, so that adds a slight variation and makes it look nice and exciting. In the browser the text size variation wasn't that convenient, though. I noticed when I was browsing my own website with the phone, the browser would immediately use different text size if there was a paragraph tag missing. This occured on other websites as well. Some of the text on the website was huge and in some parts it was way too tiny.

The phone suits those who use their smartphone for short e-mails, web browsing and standard stuff. There are many features missing that Android users would miss if they changed to WP. I hope Nokia takes action and adds these features.

My rating

Build quality

5/5

Display

4/5

Camera

3/5

Call quality

4/5

Sound quality

3/5

Battery life

2/5

Overall rating

3.5/5


Would I recommend it? Yes! Absolutely! I already have done that :)

As Nokia said, all the "smartphones" before the Lumia 900 were just beta tests, I believe the Lumia 900 can score more from my review ;) Good luck Nokia! This is a good start.

Thanks a trillion for reading my review :) Please comment, or send your comments privately by using the feedback form.


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NIKO April 12 2012

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