Nokia Lumia 800 Review - Nokia's Brave New Foray into WP7
by Brian Klug on January 4, 2012 7:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Nokia
- windows phone 7
- Mobile
- WP7
- Lumia
- Lumia 800
Display
The Lumia 800 uses a WVGA (800x480) 3.7” Super AMOLED display which of course comes with RGBG PenTile. The reality is that Windows Phone actually feels like it’s designed around AMOLED to some extent, so this isn’t nearly as big of a concern as it would be otherwise. In fact, WP7 does take advantage of AMOLED’s light-emitting nature to display as much black as possible unless you change the background theme, but anyhow onto the display itself.
Because we can’t set the brightness manually in the settings UI, we have to rely on the Low/Medium/High presets that are defined already. There’s actually a way to set the brightness manually inside ##634# but it isn’t clear whether these settings persist after exiting. As usual, we’ve measured brightness and white point - AMOLED blacks are literally zero thanks to the light-emitting nature of that display technology.
I find that the Lumia 800 isn’t as dark as the numbers would have you believe, though it could benefit from going a bit brighter. No doubt Nokia has chosen to err on the conservative side to conserve some battery life.
| Lumia 800 Display Metrics | |||
| Brightness Level | Black Brightness (nits) | White Brightness (nits) | White Point (K) |
| High | 0 | 196.1 | 5854 |
| Medium | 0 | 44.8 | 6043 |
| Low | 0 | 11.6 | 6117 |
The curved nature of the Corning Gorilla Glass display is another thing to discuss as well. It looks great and isn’t curved so much that it gets in the way of dragging things around on the display or interacting. Of course, at the most extreme viewing angles (as you approach a critical angle) you do see some total internal reflection effects, but that ends up being literally viewed from the extreme side or bottom.
As usual I’ve also put together an outdoor viewing gallery in addition to some different viewing angles of the display for your perusal. Nokia’s ClearBlack display helps things here, as they’ve placed a circular polarizer between the touch layer and the front display glass to eliminate some reflections.
I feel as though WP7 is one of the first UIs that’s designed with some of the AMOLED/PenTile display guidelines taken to heart, though there’s still more that WP7 could do to leverage some of AMOLEDs unique strengths. Little functions like displaying the time or status even when the phone is locked are things that other Nokia phones with AMOLED have done for a while that really made sense and served an important purpose that aren’t done in WP7 quite yet.
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AnnihilatorX - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
I like how the debug mode battery status readsCharged
65535%
Binary-decimal system for the geeks :)
deputc26 - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
nexusct760ster - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link
16-bit depth of charge. That's why I strive for True-charge B-)piroroadkill - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
Honestly, the N9 is nicer, being almost the same but with a cleaner front (no windows buttons) and an interesting OS as opposed to WP7.Still, it's a dead end. But a pretty dead end.
Freddo - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
Yep, I'm very interested in the N9 myself. Still haven't bought it yet though, it's been 5+ years since I had a mobile phone without ScummVM and I'm not going back to that now. So someone need to port ScummVM for it first.inplainview - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
I have an N9 and it is a nice device. I use it as a backup to my iPhone and it is quite worth. A bit quirky but still a nice phone. I like it MUCH better than the Android copy devices floating around.sprockkets - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
Only seen one briefly in person. Would have bought it too instead of android were it not for Nokia abandoning the platform.What a way to treat your community Nokia!
bplewis24 - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
Keep telling yourself that. I hope it helps you sleep better at night or something.zwer - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
ScummVM was ported within two months for its predecessor, the N900, and is officially supported by the ScummVM community. Given the virtually identical (considering the ScummVM requirements) architecture from both the software and hardware point of view between Maemo 5 and Maemo 6 / MeeGo Harmattan, I'm quite sure someone will rebuild it for the N9 as well, quite soon.'til then, when it comes to emulators/VMs, the EmuMaster pretty much covers the rest - NES, SNES, GB(A), PSX and Amiga (UAE).
kishorshack - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link
I expect Nokia and Intel partnership to continueBut this Nokia CEO stephen elop ruined everything for Nokia
First He went against what consumers wanted & went with WP7 instead of android
He killed Meego and stopped Meego devices
N9 was overly priced and Made available in very few countries
Every single thing was done
Purposely
Sad :(