The Nokia 308 does not pretend to be a smartphone, but it does claim to be a smart feature phone. The device looks attractive and will certainly appeal to the youth crowd. The build quality is good even though not extraordinary, but considering the price tag you get more than enough for your dollar. The 308 is made of good quality plastic material and offers a squeak free experience.
The dual SIM capabilities are another plus for the budget phone buyer, but the lack of Wi-Fi is a show stopper for those who want internet on the cheap. No Wi-Fi means you gotta have a decent data plan in order to use intensity on this phone. The bright side is that the 308 is very network friendly and consumes immensely less data then your average smartphone. A couple if days of usage only ate 4MB of my data plan in which time I've download a game and used Facebook And Twitter more than a couple of times.
The hardware of the phone is not stellar, but nor should we expect such hardware at this price point. The multi touch capacitive display is I believe a first in this price bracket and a welcome addition. The 308 sports a 3 inch screen with a resolution of 240 by 400 pixels. The resolution is pretty decent for that display size keeping in mind that some Android phones have lower resolution on bigger displays. The Asha 308 is equipped with an accelerometer which comes in handy for text input in landscape mode and when playing games.
On the right side of the phone we can find the volume rockers and the lock/unlock key. On top we have the 3.5mm jack port, the micro-USB port and the 2mm charging port, while on the back we have the 2MP fixed focus camera with no flash light. On the right side of the phone we have the second SIM card and the micro-SD card slots. The primary SIM card slot is located under the battery so it's not hot swappable. However the phone can switch from SIM1 to SIM2 in a heartbeat without needing to reboot.
The box contains the phone itself, the battery, a 1GB memory card, a Nokia headset and a Nokia 2mm charger. The phone can also charger tough the USB port. Unfortunately there is no USB data cable included, but at this price point it wouldn't be a first. The usual leaflets can also be found in the box, along with the warranty card.
The camera takes not very good pictures, and it seems that the camera sensor is not the same as on the Nokia 5230 add I was expected, but a cheaper unit. Video recording is disappointing with a resolution of 176x144 pixels at 10 frames per second. I was expecting at least QVGA at 15 frames per second.
The photo gallery had punch to zoom, a feature you don't see too much in feature phones. Zoning in and out is decent even though it takes a while until you see the full quality zoomed in picture.
The Asha 308 comes with Facebook and Twitter apps preinstalled, a great email client and 40 free EA games. Yes the games are java games but just the ability to download them from Nokia Store is something not many phones can brag about.
The homescreen had been completely redesigned compared with the non touch S40 devices. The new homescreen looks more like MeeGo than an S40 homescreen. There are three panels. The middle panel is a the columns grid of applications. On the right side panel you have the phone dialer, and on the left side you have your favorite panel. Here you can add it pin shortcuts to the installed apps and also add your favorite contacts.
What amazed me about this phone was that it has badge notifications for some apps like the phone app or the messaging app, which it's a first for S40.
Bringing S40 into the touch era meant Nokia had to create an on screen input method and it looks life they've learned from the mistakes they did with Symbian touch. The full qwerty keyboard is excellent in both landscape and portrait, supporting split screen too. Another welcomed addition is the pull down notifications and switches area. Just like on Nokia Belle, you can pull down from the top of the display and you can change your connectivity settings and see your incoming notifications.
The web browser is Nokia's new Xpress browser. A cloud based browser that keeps data consumption down, compressing web pages up to 90 percent.
The Nokia 308 and the Asha touch series in general meant bringing a smartphone like experience to the low end budget phones. Nokia tried to create an ecosystem for the Java based S40 devices, with an app store, games and social apps. That is what smartphones are really about, keeping you connected and making your life easier. The Asha 308 manages to do just that, and even though it's not a real smartphone, it brings you a lot of features and apps that you won't find on any other smartphone. That being said, the entire Asha series has one great advantage over other feature phones, and that's Nokia Store. I don't mean the free app catalogue, I mean the paid ones. With Nokia Store you can pay via SMS which is a golden egg in developing countries, Asha's main targets.
Hey friends and readers. Today I need your help. Nokia Romania is holding a contest where I could win a Nokia Lumia 800. If I would win this phone, I will also be able to cover Windows Phone on this blog.
In this final phase of the competition, there are only 4 contestants left. The voting closes on August 5th, so please vote me until then and if you can encourage your friends to do so too, I would be deeply grateful.
As you may or may not know the past week I used a Nokia Asha 302 as my main device, as part of a challenge. The nice folks over at Nokia Connects sent the device over to me, and so I turned of my N8 and went Asha for a week. I wrote a series of daily posts describing each day and the challenges I faced with the Asha, if and how I got around them. Now it's time for the full review. I won't go trough every little setting on the phone since the purpose of this review is to show how you can get along with the Asha 302 to do your daily tasks.
First of all let's see the specs.
Spec sheet
SoC
CPU
1GHz
GPU
No
Memory
RAM
128MB
ROM
256GB
Storage
100MB
Micro-SD
up to 32GB
Camera
Primary
3.2MP 2048x1536 pixels, no flash
Front facing
No
Video
VGA 640x480@15FPS
Display
Size
2.4 inch
Resolution
320x240px
Technology
TFT, 256K colors
Endurance
Plastic
Connectivity
WLAN
Yes, b/g/n
Network
GSM, 3G
Bluetooth
2.1 A2DP
USB on the go
Yes
Radio
Stereo FM with RDS
GPS
No
As you can see, the specs are very impressive for a feature phone, rivaling some of the early Symbian devices with 128MB of RAM and the 1GHz CPU. My guess is the Asha 302 could have ran Symbian S60v3 without a hassle, but since Nokia is ditching Symbian, S40 will have to do.
The box
Here is where the Asha 302 is lacking. The box is bare, only a charger, a headset and the phone itself. No data cable, no USB on the go data cable, no SD card. That's a pretty lite box to say the least. Oh, well, at this price point what did you expect?
Hardware
The 1GHz CPU makes S40 look like it's on steroids, which makes the Asha 302 the snappiest S40 I've ever seen so far. Everything is nearly instant. Opening apps, going back to the homescreen, everything.
The phone is powered by Nokia BL-5J 1430 MAh battery which is actually bigger than the 1200 one on the Nokia N8. That keeps the Asha 302 alive for more than 3 days of moderate usage.
The SIM card is under the battery cover so is not hot swapable.
On top of the phone we have the Nokia 2mm charging port, the micro-USB port that can also be used for USB on the go and charging, and the 3.5mm audio jack port.
On the left side of the phone we have a plastic lid covering the micro-SD card slot which makes it hot swapable.
On the front of the phone we have the ear piece on top, the 2.4 inch TFT 256K colors plastic covered screen, and the keys. The plastic covering the screen stretches from the top of the phone down under the D-pad keys group.
The keyboard is composed of two parts: the upper group includes the D-pad, Call key, End call/Exit key, Left soft key, Right soft key, the Contacts and the Messaging keys. Below there's the 4 row full QWERTY keypad.
On the back of the phone we can find the speaker grid and the 3.2MP snapper. The back cover is made of metal to better protect the battery and the camera.
Design
Seen from the front, the Asha 302 looks like a rounded E63 and that's a good thing. It's reasonably thick at 13.5mm but it compensates with a very low weight of 106 grams.
The build materials are pretty good, though I have to say that after using a keyboard such as the E6's, the materials on the Asha's look cheap. However, the keyboard handles great.
The metal cover on the back melds into the back of the phone perfectly, so you hardly notice there are two types of materials used there. The color on both the metal and the plastic body is identical, though light reflection tells the truth about the metal cover.
One thing that worries me about the design is the chrome accents on the front and keyboard of the phone. I hope they are of good quality and don't rub off in time. Otherwise, the Asha 302 looks like phone with double the budget.
Software
The S40 series on the Asha 302 has surprised me many times. The phone comes packed with a lot of communication and messaging apps and it handles connectivity flawlessly. I never once had to manually configure how it connects to the internet. I never once encountered a unable to connect message of some sorts. It just worked.
Since widgets are the new hype, Nokia deciced the Asha should get them too. You can configure your homescreen to include up to 3 widgets. There is a pretty wide range of widgets like Contacts, Shortcuts, Mail, Chat, Social, Calendar, only to mention a few.
You can check out the video below for a demo on how you can configure your homescreen widgets.
The homescreen personalization does not end here. You can assign applications or actions to any key on next to the D-pad. You can reasign the Left soft key, the Right soft key, the D-pad keys and even the Contacts and Messaging keys. One key of the D-pad has to remain assigned to switching to homescreen mode though. You can configure these shortcuts by enter the homescreen edit mode and pressing the Options left soft key. Now select "Home screen settings" and everything is there to be configured.
Menu
The menu has a default layout of 4x3 icons grid, but can be changed to a list view. The icons remind us of the Symbian and MeeGo icons, though these are clearly more simple mainly because of the low resolution screens on the Asha series.
Check out the video below for a tour of the menu and the preinstalled apps.
Contacts
The contacts application is the standard S40 application, it does not include smart dialing or number search, but you can search for names very easily.
For each contact you can assign lots of phone numbers, email address, web address, ring tone, image and even video. You can also add personal information to each contact like Birthday, Postal address, nickname, Company, Job title and more.
Messaging
Calendar
The calendar application on the Asha 302 is the stock S40 application good enough for daily use. It's a shame it can't be synchronized with your Nokia account calendar, but only with your Nokia Suite app. The calendar has three views: Month, Week and Day.
Email
The email client supports multiple accounts and the email notifications can be seen on the homescreen widget. If you don't have the widget visible you can still see a new email notification on the top status bar. This is a feature that Symbian still does not have yet. The message view is pretty simple, and cannot handle complex HTML emails. It shows the plain text email instead. It does handle attachment downloads, so that's a plus.
The email client has advanced features like update frequency, and notification period (like between 7 AM - 11 PM) just like the bigger Symbian brothers. It can also add a signature to your sent emails.
Social
The social client is decent enough satisfy your daily Twitter and Facebook needs, but I did find some shortcomings such as the inability to reply to all people mentioned in a tweet, or the fact that you can't see more than 10 tweets in a page. You have a "Get more button" but it's not as intuitive as a method such as load as you scroll would have been. The social client comes with a homescreen widget that allows you to see tweets and status updates from your friends. There are also separate shortcuts for Twitter and Facebook available for the shortcuts widget.
Anyways, check out the video below for a demo of the social client.
Store
The store application is similar to what you can find on S60 devices, sporting four tabs: Home, Categories, Search and My stuff. The choice of apps is somewhat limited, but considering we're talking about a feature phone, it's actually very good.
Connecting to the Store requires a Nokia account. If you don't have one, you can choose to create one on the spot. The process is easy and it takes a few moments not more.
The apps are split into categories but most of them are games and audio/video stuff. I was very surprised to see that the official Facebook java application was missing from the Store. I tried to install it from the web but it was unsigned apparently so it kept asking for permissions. Being a new device a few incompatibilities with the Store are expected, but they will eventually be fixed. However, it makes you wonder how many apps I actually missed in the store because they did not have the Asha 302 in their manifest.
Web Browser
The web browser on the Asha is excellent. It surprised me more than once with the rendering accuracy and most of all, with the data consumption. The entire week I used the Asha 302 as my main phone I only consumed 10MB of data.
What's staggering about the browser is the fact that it shows you the renderings of the most obscure javascript from the website you're trying to view. I think that besides the data compression benefits of the cloud, Nokia is using the cloud to actually render complex pages in HTML form that's easier to understand by the Nokia Browser. As you can see in the right photo above, even the number of likes is displayed, and that number is rendered my a very complex javascript snippet.
Check out the video below for a demo of the web browser.
Camera
The camera on the Asha 302 is nothing special, but at this price point it would require magic to have a special camera. The 3.2MP shots look decent enough in good light conditions, but that changes when you're trying to shoot in low light. Don't event try to shoot moving objects in low light.
The video recording is actually very decent with a resolution of 640x480 at 15 FPS. The videos are not large in size, and are recorder in 3GP format. For example, a 2 minutes video weights around 30MB of storage.
Check out the video below for a tour of the camera and video recorder software.
Gallery
The gallery app is called Photos and it lets you access your snapped photos and videos as well as start up the camera or the video recorder. The My Photos section is the actual photo gallery. You can also view your albums and you videos.
The Timeline section shows you the photos in a streamed view according to the date they were taken, something similar to Symbian's cover flow.
Conclusion
For this price bracket, the Asha 302 is the phone to have. It's very well connected and social. You won't have to go trough the painful process of setting up as you do on smartphones. For most users the Asha 302 is going to be "plug in your SIM card and ready to go". This is what Asha is all about: connecting.
First day without a smartphone... Using Asha 302 as my main device made me realize that I'm nor really using my smartphone to it's full potential. Asides from smart dialing, the weather app and Dungeon Hunter 2 HD, I haven't missed much so far.
Here are the pros and cons of the Asha 302 so far. I'll start with the cons.
Cons:
No smart dialing
No Nokia account contacts and calendar sync
Installed apps are not visible in the main menu
No search app
Update The widget can be configured [Shortcuts widget cannot be reconfigured]
APN settings very hard to find
Materials used for the keyboard look cheap
No SD card in the box
Pros
Flawless connectivity management (never did I once have to choose a connection)
Good mail client
Good social client
CPU speed more than makes up for java apps
Email notification in the system top bar (Symbian Belle still does not have this feature)
Ability to handle multiple email accounts with ease
Very good hardware QWERTY
Solid build with metal cover on the back (despite the cheap looking plastic of the keyboard)
Threaded SMS view
Camera UI surprisingly good
Good loudspeaker volume
Decent 150+MB free in phone memory on first boot
So far so good. Hopefully I can stay away from smartphones for 6 more days. I wonder how I will survive the weekend, considering I usually play a lot DH2 then.
A while back I received a Nokia 603 from the folks at Nokia Connects as part of their latest Try Something New contest. Since I had the Lumia 800 review in the works, the 603 review got sidetracked, but here it is today.
Spec sheet
SoC
CPU
1GHz ARM11
GPU
2D/3D graphics HW accelerator with OpenVG1.1 and OpenGL ES 2.0
Memory
RAM
512MB
ROM
1GB
Storage
2GB
Micro-SD
up to 32GB
Camera
Primary
5MP 2592Ñ…1944 pixels, full focus(EDoF), LED flash
Front facing
No
Video
HD 720p@30FPS
Display
Size
3.5 inch
Resolution
640x360px
Technology
LCD ClearBlack
Endurance
Scratch resistant glass
Multitouch
Two point
Connectivity
WLAN
Yes, b/g/n
Network
GSM, 3G
Bluetooth
2.1 A2DP
Sensors
Accelerometer, proximity, compass
Radio
Stereo FM with RDS
GPS
Yes, with A-GPS support
The box
The box contains the usual wired headsets, Nokia USB charger, a Micro-USB data cable and the phone's battery. As part of the trial the #NokiaTSN box had a Nokia Luna too, as you can see in the pictures above, but keep in mind that if you purchase yourself a 603, you won't get a free Luna.
Hardware
The bump in specs is obvious for the new generation of Symbian devices. The 512MB or RAM and 1GHz CPU makes the 603 run Symbian like never before. Not to mention the GPU was also upgraded.
The internal storage is 2GB which cannot be compared with the N8's 16GB or the C7's 8GB, but I have to say that it can fit all the games and apps you can think of. You will have to buy a SD card for music and pictures though. I recommend you set you camera to store photos and videos on the SD card and set you Nokia Store to install apps and games on your mass memory and not on your SD card. The internal storage is way faster than your SD card, and as a consequence, you apps will start faster from your mass memory.
The display is a capacitive 3.5 inch LCD screen protected by a layer of scratch resistant glass. The first week I kept the protective plastic foil on the phone, until it actually peeled itself off and then I had to remove it. To my surprise, after a week of normal usage, there was no scratch whatsoever on the 603 display. I even checked the 603 specs sheet again to make sure it doesn't have Gorilla Glass.
Below the display you will find the three single body keys: Call, Menu and End call/Power off, while above the display you'll find the ear piece.
On top of the phone you can find the power/lock button, the Micro-USB port and the 3.5mm audio jack port.
Of the right side, you will find the volume rockers and the camera key. I have to say that the camera key is a bit hard to press, but keeping in mind that there is no auto focus on the 5MP snapper, you don't have to worry about pressing the key half way.
You can see NFC sensor and connector on the inside of the back cover, and I have to say that it works perfectly. I only used NFC to pair the phone with the Luna, since I had no other NFC enable devices around.
Design
I don't know which design Nokia came up with first, the Lumia 710 or the 603, but the point is, it's great. I'm not saying amazing, I'm saying great. It's no polycarbonate, it's not anodized aluminium but you'll quickly fall in love with it. It just sits neatly and comfortable in the hand. I actually could not believe that I picked up the 603 lots of times just to feel it in the hand again.
Build quality
The build quality is very good. There is no metal or Gorilla glass present, but the plastic used in the 603 is good quality plastic. The back cover that practically covers the entire back, has a soft rubbery touch that helps with the grip too. The scratch display makes a big difference compared to the Nokia 500 plastic one, that could get easily scratched if left unprotected.
Software
The 603 comes with Nokia Belle preinstalled(you can read my full review here), but about a week ago Nokia Belle Feature Pack 1 was made available for the 603. FP1 brings lots of new features and improvements, and a lot of widgets too. I will have a review of FP1 once I get my hands on a device running it.
The 603 however got left behind in the CPU bump department, where the 700 and 701 got a 300MHz bump, now running at 1.3GHz on FP1, but honestly I don't think the 603 is gonna suffer because of this. It's as smooth as they get, and FP1 will only speed it up.
Camera
Close ups are a no go on EDoF cameras, but landscapes are a pleasure. The 603 is very snappy when taking pictures, part of this speed comes from the lack of focusing time. Outdoors pictures look very well, but indoors, as any LED flash, it suffers. It's no match to the N8 and it's Xenon flash.
Here are some samples in broad daylight.
Video recording is as good as it gets with 720p@30fps recording. However, if you wish to record lots of HD videos, you'll have to get an SD card.
As a video sample, here is the 603 unboxing shot by the 603 itself:
Conclusion
That being said, the 603 is not exactly your typical budget phone. It's on the cheap side, but you get a lot of value for money with it. It's target, first time smartphone buyers.
Before you start reading this review, you should get yourself a cup of coffee or a soda or something, because you're gonna need it :)
The name of this review is First encounter because this was my first real encounter with Windows Phone and I looked at it from the point of view of someone who's had a decent experience with smartphones, so you may find some comparisons with other OS's. These comparisons are not in any way intended to belittle the approaches compared, but only to show different perspectives of the same basic features.
The Nokia Lumia 800 is clearly Nokia N9's twin brother. Same beautiful polycarbonate body, same blazing screen, same beautiful curved glass on the front, same 8MP camera. But that's kind of it. From here on, Lumia gets it's own personality. The size of the screen has been reduced to 3.7 inch from the N9's 3.9, but that's only because they don't have the same resolution. While the N9 had 854x480, the Lumia has the Windows Phone standard 800x480. Those 54 pixels were replaced by three capacitive buttons required by Windows Phone. Make no mistake, the Lumia screen is as wide as the N9's, but it's not as tall as the N9's. From my own experience typing on the portrait QWERTY keyboard is hassle free. The platform has also changed from N9's TI OMAP platform, to Qualcomm's Scorpion.
Here goes the specs sheet:
SoC
CPU
1.4GHz Scorpion
GPU
Adreno 205 GPU
Chipset
Qualcomm MSM8255 Snapdragon
Memory
RAM
512MB
Storage
16GB
Camera
Primary
8MP 3264x2448 pixels, Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus, dual-LED flash
Front facing
No
Video
HD 720p@30FPS
Display
Size
3.7 inch
Resolution
800x480px
Technology
AMOLED ClearBlack
Endurance
Corning Gorilla Glass
Multitouch
Two point
Connectivity
WLAN
Yes, b/g/n
Network
GSM, 3G
Bluetooth
2.1 A2DP
Sensors
Accelerometer, proximity, compass
Radio
Stereo FM with RDS
GPS
Yes, with A-GPS support
When Stephen Elop announced Nokia's shift in the main smartphone platform from MeeGo to Windows Phone, I had my doubts. Everyone did. People started heralding the death of Nokia, the takeover of Nokia by Microsoft. Well, a year later none of that happened. Besides the departure of Symbian from closely under Nokia's wing to Accenture, no one has gone under. Not Nokia and certainly not Stephen Elop. It was tough to see Symbian being let go by Nokia(even if Symbian is still flourishing), but now it all seems understandable. After the Lumia line launched, that's what all Nokia fans started talking about. And for good reason.
Many wondered a year ago why oh why did Nokia go with the Windows Phone platform? There were so many possibilities back then. Let's see some of those. First of all there was the almighty Android, and many thought that might have been the best choice. Second, there was Nokia's lovechild, MeeGo, which is an amazing OS by the way, and third there was Windows Phone. Everyone believed that Nokia choose Windows Phone because of Stephen Elop's past Microsoft experience. In my opinion, that had nothing to do with it. Nokia would have loved to keep MeeGo, but it wasn't getting enough developer traction, which as we all know is vital for an ecosystem. Qt started blossoming way later when it was already too late for MeeGo. So Nokia had two choices: Android or Windows Phone. And they choose what was the closer resemblance to MeeGo, namely Windows Phone. There are lots of things these two have in common. Think about swipe gestures, think about simple homescreens, think about pinning webpages to your homescreen.
Hardware and the box
The first impression the Lumia 800 leaves you with is "". Yes, that was a blank space. It leaves you breathless. You can't speak for a few seconds, and then, when you get back to your senses, all you can babble is "WOW!!!!!". The phone is light. Lighter than it's N9 brother. I thought that on a body like that of the Lumia 800, Cyan color was the best fit. I was wrong. The black body coupled with the ClearBlack display that covers the most front part of the phone, looks waay better than Cyan. The matte texture of the Lumia 800 is a joy to feel. Maybe a glossy texture would have looked better, but the matte finish feels much, much better and gives you more confidence when holding the phone in your hand. I think glossy materials are slippery and I'd take matte materials over glossy any day, even if they are smudge magnets and harder to clean than glossy ones. Matte is classy. As is the Lumia 800.
When I reviewed the N9 last year, I kept it most of the time in the silicone cover provided in the box. When I shot the pictures for the review and took the phone out of the cover I was shocked. I almost forgot how beautiful it was without the cover on. This time, it kept the Lumia for 2 weeks in it's natural form, uncovered :)
So let's take the tour of the phone.
On the front of the phone you can find the curved Gorilla glass covering both the 3.7 inch Amoled ClearBlack display and the capacitive keys required by Windows Phone(Back, Home and Search). Above the display you can find the ear piece, and on top right, under the Gorilla glass, there is an array of sensors.
On the bottom you can find the loudspeaker grid, which doubles as a hiding place for the mouth piece. This is a nice touch, borrowed(like the entire design) from the Nokia N9.
On top we can find the 3.5mm jack port, a lid covering the micro-USB port, and the slider to release the micro-SIM card tray. The micro-SIM card tray can only be released after opening the micro-USB lid. On the right side of the phone we can find the volume rocker keys, the Power/Lock key and the camera key. A nice touch of Windows Phone is the camera key long press, which opens up the camera app even if the phone is locked. I've grown accustomed with this feature, and it's gonna be hard for me when I go back to the N8.
On the back, we have the Nokia + Carl Zeiss Tessar strip that engulfs the 8MP wide angle auto-focus camera. On top of the camera there is the dual LED flash, a slightly different position than it had on the Nokia N9.
So what else can you find in the box? Well, the usual stuff. The box also holds a silicone cover for the Lumia, a data cable, which pluged into the provided AC adapter turns into the charger, and a Nokia headset. Of course, don't forget all the booklets and manuals.
Here is the unboxing video in case you missed my post.
Homescreen and menu
The homescreen is the place where you can put your most needed applications in the form of live tiles. The live tiles show you relevant information and notifications about those apps. You can see your unread email count, your missed calls or incoming text messages, your Twitter mentions and Facebook notifications. Other tiles can show your for example the number of apps that have updates available, or, in the calendar tile, you can see your upcoming events. Tiles can be simple, occupying half of a homescreen line, or double, filling the entire width of a homescreen line. Most of the tiles have color themes that can be changed from the Settings application to better suit your mood, while others, like IMDb for example, show the application logo and a slideshow of information.
What Microsoft managed to do with the live tiles is perfectly merge two completely different ways of thinking about a homescreen. First you have the Apple way, where apps notify you that something is going on, and you have to open the app in order to see whats up. Second you have android that tries to give you relevant information about an app, though widgets, so you can make the decision to open or not an app. That's OK too, as long as it follows some common sense rules. Andy Rubin was saying that Windows Phone is restrictive from that point of view, and he said that if a dev wants to take over the whole screen he should be able to. Well, what happens when all developers wanna do that? You'll get a widget or two per homescreen, like it happens in real life on Android, and that would be useless. The space on the Windows Phone homescreen is much better managed trough the live tiles. A tile can show enough information to make an informed decision, and if one tile is not enough, as a developer, you can always use a double tile layout, or cycle information on a single or even double tile.
Microsoft managed to make things work with the vertical scroll layout and the tiles that have double roles: to provide information and to act like a shortcut. Not all tiles look the same but they do behave similarly and that avoids confusion and de-focusing from the user's point of view.
One thing I would like to see in the Windows Phone homescreen and that is "push" tiles. Let me explain what I mean. When you have application X, Y, Z showing you a notification on it's live tile everything is OK as long as you see that tile. But what if your tile is two screens(vertically) away? You won't see it unless you scroll down. So whenever you unlock your phone you have to scroll all the way down and then all the way up in order to not miss anything. What if the tiles that have incoming notifications would be "pushed" at the top of the homescreen and that way when you get a notification from an app that is on screen two, you'll immediately see it on top of all other things. After the notification is opened, the tile could move back where it's normally located. What do you think of that?
Microsoft likes to call the Windows Phone applications, hubs, and I guess from a perspective that is correct, because apps interact with each other seamlessly and integrate parts of each other like social networking sharing and more.
Take a look at the video below for more about the Homescreen and start
The Lockscreen
Windows Phone's lockscreen is one of the most complete and well done lockscreen in the industry. You can customize it's wallpaper from the Settings app, it shows you music player controls, missed calls, emails, messages and even overlays push notifications. You can easily swipe up after you press the lock/power button. It also shows you if you have alarms set for the next 24 hours.
The Task Manager
The Windows Phone task manager is similar to the Symbian task manager. Holding down the back button will pop up a side scrollable list of all the opened applications. From here you can go to any application, but unfortunately you cannot close the apps from here. For that you will have to actually open the application and press the back button until the app closes. I guess this is meant to avoid forced closes without the application saving whatever data needs to be saved prior to it being closed. All in all, the task manager is a neat feature, even if it is limited. On a side note, I must say that not all apps you see in the task manager list are live apps. Some of them are in hibernation and are resumed when they are opened.
Social Integration
Social sharing and information is available in Windows Phone everywhere. I do mean everywhere. Wherever you have a photo, a video, a website, you can share it. Just tap the "..." button and then Share. You can share stuff via Windows Live, Twitter or Facebook, or you can send stuff via any of your mail accounts. Literally every application preloaded in Windows Phone benefits from social integration. It is the most detailed(almost obsessive) integration ever seen. One may say that Windows Phone was created with the sole purpose of letting the user share everything. Take a look at the video below for more about social integration.
The People Hub
The people hub is the heart and center of your social life on Windows Phone. Windows Phone does not come with Twitter and Facebook clients preinstalled, but for good reason. For your casual Facebook and Twitter user, the people hub can cover these social networks brilliantly. When you open the people hub, you are greeted with your own profile info and the last social network update that mentions you, and a list of people(or contacts). You can group the contacts under groups, and a group called Family is created by default. The contacts list can be browsed smartly by using the letter tiles. Just press any of the colored background letters, and you will be taken to a screen with the letters of the alphabet, and there you will see highlighted the letters that have at least one contact starting with them.
The second view you have here is the what's new view. This view shows you the latest updates from your social networks accounts, and that includes tweets, retweets, Facebook posts, likes, shares and everything. You can easily tap any one of them and reply or retweet it, comment on it, like it or open the embedded link in Internet Explorer. The last view is the recent view, where you can find the contacts you've recently interacted with by any of the means available, call, text or social network. A very neat thing in the people hub is that you don't need to open up a dedicated Facebook or Twitter application in order for you to post a message of someone's wall, or see their latest updates. All you need to do is tap and open that person's profile from the people hub and you have it all here. Besides the calling, texting, chatting and writing of Facebook wall, you can also see that person's recent social networks updates and even their Facebook photos. You can also see your recent history with that contact(calls, texts and everything). I like the way the Lumia links contacts from various sources. Some are automatically linked, but some, which are not detected, can be manually linked. When I synched the Lumia with my Google account, I had 4 or 5 entries for the same person. What I liked best was that it was very easy for me to figure out how to link the contacts, even though it was the first time I was using the people hub, and I considered this an advanced operation. But simplicity is here at it's best, and linking contacts just got way easier. The good thing is that all actual contacts are not changed, so the linking does not affect the contacts synchronization, it just affects the way the contacts are shown in the people hub. I also liked the way the linking option suggests contacts that can be linked, after selecting another contact besides the original.
Another part of the people hub is the Me tile. This tile shows you information about all your accounts. Here you can see whenever someone sends your a Facebook message, or mentions you in a tweet, they all show up on the me tile. Tapping the Me tile will open up your profile information. Here you can post messages, check, set your chat status and see those notifications we were talking about earlier(the panel is conveniently named notifications). You can also find a section called What's new which will show you your latest status updates or tweets from your defined social accounts.
Take a look at the video below for more about the People hub.
The Marketplace
The Marketplace is a bit of a disappointment because it misses a lot of features that are to me expected from such an app. First of all, the search results sometime show items that have nothing to do with your search. Second, there is no personal history view, like on Nokia Store for example, so it is pretty hard to keep track of your downloaded and paid items.
On the bright side, we have the try feature available for paid apps, which lets you try a paid application before buying it. The Marketplace also has a mandatory screenshots section for each app, so you can see a glance of what that app actually looks like before bothering to download it. This feature saved me from a lot of download and quick uninstall.
Take a look at the video below for more about Marketplace.
The Calendar
The calendar application can easily handle calendars from multiple sources, but these sources can only be defined in the system settings under email and accounts. The calendar app instantly linked with my Google, Facebook and Windows Live accounts. The calendar app also gets special treatment on the homescreen. It benefits from a double tile that shows you upcoming events and the current date. The application itself has 3 default views: Day, Agenda and Todo.
The calendar can be switched to a month view from the bottom toolbar, same toolbar that hosts the new event or todo button. Each calendar is color coded so they can hardly be confused. I liked the fact that you can open up the day view and add an event just by tapping the hour you want that event to happen. You can then type a name for the event in-line. Never seen this approach so far, but I like it. It's simple and clean. In the agenda view you can see a list of all your events, future and past(only a few months back) color coded as mentioned above to avoid confusion. The settings panel allows you to turn on/off the accounts you wish to see in the calendar, select colors for your various calendars and a few more options. Here too, the clean and simple user interface wins hands down.
The Phone
The Phone application is comprised of two sections, one for history and one for dialer. Unfortunately the dialer has no smart dialing so you have to do with the history view and the search button at the bottom. This is pretty nasty when you do a lot of calling while driving. No one wants to have the portrait keyboard pop up at you while you're behind the wheel. On the same note, the dialer button could have been bigger and more visible for the same driving purpose. Here I have to say that Symbian has a much better approach with the dialer being able to both call a desired number, and search trough the contacts at the same time.
The Messaging
The messaging application has a thread view which lets you see your conversations with any people and an online view, which shows you a list of people who are online on your configured accounts of Windows Live and Facebook. Unfortunately persons who are online on Google Talk for example are not shown here. There is an app for GChat, but I would have expected Google Talk integration straight in the operating system. The threaded view conversations include text messages, Facebook messages and Windows Live messages too, all under the same conversation. You can choose where you want to send your message from (Text, Facebook). You definitely don't need a Facebook chat application.
Take a look at the video below for more about the Messaging app.
The Email
The email is another big part of Windows Phone experience. The email client is pretty powerful, and it does have features that other OS's miss. First of all you can spot the email client a mile away, because of it's white background approach. I've seen the same white background in two other situations: the Office app and the Xbox Live app. I can understand relating the Email app with the Office app(it might as well be a part of it), but Xbox? Why? Anyway.
The email client groups emails by their sender address, so you get something like GMail conversation view, but in the form of a tree view. That is good, because you can see all relevant conversations right there. The email client is very capable, being able to display full HTML emails probably using the Internet Explorer rendering engine. It even has double tap to zoom.
There is an "Unread" view where you can see all your unread emails, a "Flagged" view where you can see all you flagged emails and an "Urgent" view where you can see messages marked as urgent. How you can mark them as urgent? I have no idea.
The email client has a neat little search feature. It will first search in your downloaded emails, and if you can't find anything there, you can also search in your entire email account, the only condition being that it has to be an IMAP account. POP3 accounts are no go for search.
The email client also integrates nicely throughout the OS for sharing items via email.
A very notable feature of the email client is the ability to have a linked inbox. If you have, like I do, two or more email accounts you can see them in a unified inbox, all messages under the same roof. You can link two or more, and while you have a linked inbox, you can have separate accounts too(not the same as the linked ones of course). Each inbox(including the linked one) have shortcuts in the main menu, and can also be pinned to the homescreen and they'll each show their own notifications.
Take a look at the video below for more about the Email client.
Maps and Drive
One of the strongest selling points of the Lumia range is the preloaded Nokia Maps and Nokia Drive applications. Finally Windows Phone lovers can have offline maps and SatNav solution. If want to get rid of your classic SatNav device from your car, as Symbian users did a long while ago, the Lumia line comes to the rescue. The Nokia Maps app is what you've got used to with all other Nokia smartphones: pinpoint accuracy, fast location and amazing maps. The Nokia Drive app provides you Nokia's top of the line turn by turn voice guided navigation. All you need to do is download the maps for your country while you're on a WiFi connection, and that's it. No precious data plan is now required for you to freely navigate.
The map application can show you three layers, one for the vectorial map, one for the satellite overview, and one with public transport routes overlaid. The maps application also has a search feature that searches and finds places even when offline. If you do want to find some place to eat or sleep, you can use the Places feature that will give you clues on the map. Selecting an item from the shown places also gives you the option to get directions to that place, and shows the estimate time you'll spend by walking there. The estimated time is not necessarily very accurate, but it's pretty close. The Nokia Drive application has both a 2D and a 3D mode that you can easily switch from the navigation options. The user interface uses big buttons, to be more visible and easy to use while driving. In the settings section you can choose the drive mode day or night, the voice of your turn by turn navigation and you can also manage the maps.
PC Synchronization via Zune
Here is where Microsoft really messed up. When I first booted up the Lumia, I was provided with my region and language selection. My language of choice is always English, so there was no problem there, but when I had to select a region, Romania was nowhere to be found. Since I could not skip the choice, I choose UK. When I connected the Lumia to my PC and started up Zune, it notified me that the regional settings on my phone did not match those of my PC and suggested I change the regional settings on my PC to match those on the phone. Huh? Why? Does that make any sense? It didn't to me. You are left with the choice of potentially messing up all other applications installed on your PC that rely on your regional settings just to properly sync your phone. At least I could see my photos and videos and could easily download them to my PC.
The Camera
The camera is a pretty decent one. It behaves like the one on the N9, but with a much improved low lighting capture. Compared to the photos taken in low light in the N9, the Lumia 800 is clearly the winner. Of course none of the above mentioned devices can hold a candle to the N8 in such a competition, because none of them have the advantage of a Xenon flash. The camera user interface is pretty clean with a few essential options visible at first, like the flash settings, video mode switch and the zoom in/out buttons. One thing to note here is how easy it is for one to share a photo just taken with the camera. After snapping the photo, you can swipe from left to right and the photo comes back into the view like the media gallery, and you can send it or share it via the contextual menu. A swipe from right to left takes you back to the camera.
The video recording however is much worse than on the N9. I had a very hard time focusing the image when the light was a little dim. I noticed that by default the camera application uses Macro zoom mode, so I switched to Normal, but upon reboot, the setting came back as Macro to haunt me. On the bright side, you have the camera key override that is a genius idea. Hold down the camera button and the phone, be it locked or not, will unlock itself and open up the camera app. You are ready to snap a photo in no more than two seconds from the time you realize you got a shot. All in all, the camera experience is a mixed bag, with a better than N9 photo mode, but a worse video mode.
The Media Gallery
The media gallery application on Windows Phone is called Pictures and this app to is a hub. Besides the pictures stored on your phone, it shows you the Facebook albums too. This is a very neat feature and it was very pleasant surprise for me. You are first greeted with a choice of let's call them sections. First you have the Camera roll, which is the local gallery practically. It shows you the pictures taken with the phone itself.Then you have the Albums section where you can see all your albums, both local(from the internal memory) and online, meaning the SkyDrive photos and the Facebook albums. The next section is called date, and it shows the local photos grouped by the month they were taken. The next section is People where you can see the photo albums of your friends. There is also a less visible section called Favourites which can be accessed by side scrolling anywhere but while on Camera roll. Here you can see the pictures and videos you have marked as favourites.
The media gallery, just like most of the apps coming with Windows Phone, has strong social integration. When you view an image, you can choose to share it via your social accounts or via email. On the same contextual menu, you can set the image as your wallpaper, add it to favourites and auto-fix the photo. Auto fix attempts to adjust the colors and brightness of the photo. The videos can also be uploaded to Facebook or shared via email from the gallery.
Take a look at the video below for more about the Camera and the Pictures app.
The Music Player
Unlike other Windows Phones, the Lumia has on board both the Windows Phone default player, and the Nokia player called Nokia Music. The main advantage of Nokia Music is that it can connect with your Nokia account and you can have all the music you paid for trough the Nokia Music service available on your Windows Phone.
The Windows Phone default player is actually, a hub. It's called Music+Videos and it shows you as you may have guessed, your music and your videos. Don't ask me why it shows you the videos(since you can see them in the gallery too), but it does. You can see your tracks by artist, genre, album, plain song list, defined playlists. The Music+Videos app can also handle your podcasts and you can listen to the radio using the same app. There is no built in radio antenna so you'll have to connect your headset to use the radio. The Music+Videos app has a few surprises up it's sleeves. The first one is the Applications section, where you can see all the apps installed on your phone that "know" music and videos. You can see there Nokia Music, Soundtracker, Spotity, Vevo(to quote some of the apps I have installed) but you can also see some that have nothing to do with music and videos(like Engadget or System Information). Another nice surprise is the New section where you can see the latest videos or songs that have been made available trough the applications I've described above. So I can see here the lates Vevo videos, the latest 3 Doors Down album and so on. And the last surprise is the History section. Yes you have a History section for your music and videos. You can see here all the videos you've watches recently, or the latest tracks you've listened to. As you may have guessed, the videos include those ones watched on the applications that "know" videos like Vevo for example.
Alarms
The Alarms application allow you to set I think an unlimited number of alarms(I stopped at 30). What I like most about the app is the fact that you can disable/enable an alarm by a single touch. The way you add an alarm is not to bad either with the scrollable tiles with the hour and the minute. It's not as easy as the Alarms on the N9, but way better than the ones on Symbian. However, I have to warn Nokia users here that the Lumia 800, and any other Windows Phone for that matter, do not, I repeat, do not wake at the alarm set time if they are turned off. In order for your phone to ring, it has to be powered on. You can set it to offline mode plus battery saving to spare battery power overnight, but do not turn it off like you would do with a Symbian smartphone.
Calculator
The Calculator app is not much to write about, have the most basic operations available. It doesn't even have the square root option it's Symbian counterpart has.
Contacts Transfer
Nokia offers this app preinstalled to help you, as an owner of an older Nokia phone, bring your contacts over to your new Windows Phone using Bluetooth. Nokia is famous for it's Phone Switch application that did exactly the same thing on Symbian. It would have been nice if it would have had an app to do that with your Ovi calendar.
Games
Every game installed from the Marketplace goes into this hub. You won't find them in your main menu, but once you open the Games app you can breathe easy, they're all here. The main screen presents you with all the games you have installed. They are grouped into two categories. First in the Xbox Live category where you can find the games that use your Windows Live account to save settings and achievements, and second there is the Other category where you can find the rest of the games. Next there is the Xbox Live section where you can see and configure your avatar, check your profile and achievements. You also have a Spotlight where you can see recommended games and quickly access some games collections like Game for Kids.
Internet Explorer
The much criticized Internet Explorer is on board the Windows Phone as the main browser. I have to say that the critics are dead wrong. Unlike it's desktop version, the mobile Internet Explorer is a pleasure. I've never had such an amazing experience on a mobile browser ever. It's fast, it's responsive and there is no lag at all no matter what you throw at it. It has the ability to do tabbed browsing, but only 8 tabs. Once you pass the 8 limit, the least accessed tabs start getting replaced by the new ones you open.
You may open the IE on Windows Phone and ask yourself: Where the heck are the tabs? Well, you need to press the "..." button before you get to the tabs. I wish there was an easier way to implement the tabs selection. Besides the tabs, you have your usual Favourites, or bookmarks as we normal people call them, your sharing options to social accounts or email accounts, and the amazing options, seen only on the Nokia N9, to pin the current page to the start menu. That is very, very cool.
Take a look at the video below for more about Internet Explorer.
Office
The office suite includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote handling. You can access documents either from the phone itself, as well as from an Office 365 account, a SharePoint server or from your Windows Live account through SkyDrive. The office applications satisfy and surpass even the most die hard business executives that have the sick pleasure of editing documents on their phones(like me). You can probably do with the mobile Office suite all the things that you can do with your desktop Office, but of course in a much longer time.
Settings
The settings application is a main part of the Windows Phone OS. Here you can setup your ringtone, tiles color theme, connectivity settings, email and social accounts, date and regional settings and find software updates. Your keyboard language can be changed from the keyboard section, but be aware that not all languages are supported. For those of you who can't find your language in the keyboard list let me give you an useful tip. When you open the Keyboard settings, tap the Typing Settings sections, tap again on the line below the Typing Settings title where it says "press to change" and do yourself a big favor and uncheck the "Suggest text and ..." option or at least the second option "Correct misspelled words". For people using two languages like English and one that Windows Phone does not support, or even a single language that is not supported, these options MUST be unchecked. Otherwise you'll find your self typing words twice, the second time correcting the spellchecker's correction.
Conclusion
If you are a first time smartphone user, or even if you are a seasoned one, Windows Phone will blow your mind with a simple and fresh approach to a smartphone. Everything after Windows Phone will seem over complicated and tedious. You won't be able to justify the existence of so many settings in other OS's like Android and iOS when with Windows Phone, meddling through such stuff is minimal to non-existing. Windows Phone is a breath of fresh air. It has some quirks and perks that should be solved by the Microsoft team as soon as possible, but all in all, it's an OS you do not want to ignore. The Lumia 800 brings extra value to Windows Phone. It really puts it out there. The Lumia 800 is not only Nokia's best possible gift to Microsoft, but to every other Windows Phone manufacturer. Don't take my word for it, you'll be able to see it in the market very soon.
