Nokia Lumia 800 deals & review

The Nokia Lumia is the latest offering from the Finnish telecoms giant who teamed up with Microsoft to release this elegant smartphone in Autumn 2011. It may not feature the latest dual-core processors, but the Lumia’s 1.4 GHz single-core processor is still speedy, and operates on Microsoft’s user-friendly Windows Phone 7 Mango.

This handset is clearly a Nokia offering: the gently curved casing feels pleasant to hold, and sturdier than some of its anorexic market rivals. The casing comes in a wider range of colour variants than the majority of smartphone handsets. As well as being available in black, Nokia also currently offer cyan and magenta - that’s blue and pink to those of us who aren’t graphic designers.

The screen, at 3.7 inches diagonally, is a little bigger than that of the iPhone 4S.  The Lumia’s AMOLED display boasts magnificent colours, reduced light reflection and wide viewing angles.

The 8 MP rear-facing camera is the equal of anything the smartphone market currently has to offer, featuring autofocus with Carl Zeiss optics, dual LED flash and a dedicated hardware shutter button, making it easy to access the camera for photo capture.

The two stand-out features of this charming phone are Nokia Drive and Nokia Music. Along with a dedicated in-car interface, Nokia Drive offers turn-by-turn navigation via GPS. The hardware locks onto your position and pulls in mapping data almost instantaneously. The user interface features over-sized buttons for easy use of your dash-mounted phone, and once you’ve chosen your destination, the Lumia relays directions to you verbally as you follow a 2D or 3D map.

Meanwhile, Nokia Music offers a no-registration, subscription-free selection of MixRadio playlists that are chosen to suit your location. These playlists can easily be stored, or you can create and share your own, a welcome advance on traditional FM radio. Also, If you would rather listen to your own music, the Lumia has 16GB of internal storage - over 2500 songs - plus free SkyDrive storage which allows for another 25 GB of media kept in the cloud. Finally, there’s the ESPN Sports Hub: this allows users to pin a league or team to their start page as a “live tile”, imparting quick access to the sports news of your choice.

Of the major smartphones to be launched in 2011, the Lumia is perhaps the most affordable.  As such, the phone is therefore ideal for someone who’s not obsessed with cutting-edge technical capabilities, but still wants reliable internet access on a user-friendly platform. Tellingly, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer called Android “an operating system for computer scientists”, and was perhaps criticising Apple when he talked about products that presented "a sea of icons”. By contrast the Lumia is elegant in its simplicity. With Nokia Drive and Nokia Music, this handset seems to be aimed at a market that includes people who drive regularly. Add the phone’s durability, the simplistic OS and the ESPN Sports Hub, and it seems the phone would be ideally suited for consumers such as tradesmen or mobile salespeople. It is a solid, simple and beautifully-designed product that should appeal to those aiming at the more functional and affordable end of the smartphone market.