It's in the mail
Third party apps have previously tried to link recent e-mail and SMS to and fro with the contacts book. Well, this is much more ambitious: it unites communication from different protocols and services, by person, all under one roof, including the digital slimetrail we leave on social networks. The centre of gravity, though, is now on-line, rather than on a PC, or on the device itself.
This makes sense as the vast majority of non-technical people have always used a webmail service as their primary personal e-mail account. And Facebook or LinkedIn are considered the natural upgrade to e-mail. Even though I’m a minimal social network user (because I owe it to my contacts to protect their identity: it must not be inferred) I found WinPho 7's People function integrated things incredibly well.
To avoid the information deluge that swamps previous attempts at a “unified inbox” you can view the communications activity of subsets of people – separating “Friends” from “Attention-seeking internet blowhards” for example. And you can turn off the streams by service.
No contacts sync with the Zune equivalent on the Mac, but content transfer is very easy
But how did those contacts get there, you may wonder, since it doesn’t sync with a Mac or a PC? Well, Nokia thoughtfully includes the traditional migration tool, Contacts Transfer, to haul your address book out of an old Symbian or S40 phone – and this worked flawlessly.
Indeed, I’d have been stuck without it, as my social network address books are more holes than cheese. The Contacts Transfer app supports the Bluetooth Phone Book Access Profile (PBAP), so Android and iOS devices can spill their guts to the Lumia 800. And if you're really old school, the People app will import Sim card contacts too.
Network contacts updates and the carousel scrolling between apps
The design, based on oversized typography is very usable. That’s because much of the traditional UI chrome is simply absent. Mango even hides most of the traditional phone status indicators at the top, too: the clock and WLAN status are visible, but network signal strength and operator ID must be pulled down with a swipe.
Next page: Design elements
COMMENTS
So far as it goes not a bad effort
And from the title I was talking about the review not the phone itself.
No comment on the maps from Nokia, how was the GPS signal pickup? Does this phone offer all the current Symbian methods of position determination?
The included headphones and music output as a whole got no mention which greatly disappointed me.
The included case that comes with the phone, worthless POS or actually worth using? Did it make the design issues worse or better for the reviewer? Was it even tried? How hard was it to get on the phone and then take off? Did it add excess bulk?
Charging time? Power consumption of said charger? Both when charging and not.
Design issues. OK you didn't find the design that great and I don't mind a reviewer saying that, but given it's been taken from the N9 nearly in its entirety I would wager that the build quality will be much much better than is hinted at in here. The technology of the screen got very short shrift. I find this baffling when it is of such a cutting edge nature.
Come on El Reg, stop pulling your punches. I come here looking for a review that lets the reader know that the phone has been truly used and abused. This reads like it was borrowed for 24 hours and that the reviewer had several other more important things to be doing at the same time. For a review score of 80% I would of expected much more detail. If you felt that all the phone had to offer was covered then I would of said the score, based on this review, should of been around the 58-62% range.
That's because it's not really a Nokia
The innards and antenna are made by Compal, an off-the-shelf WP7 board (because they are all the same). And the camera is better than the one on the E7, better sensor and not EDoF - low-light performance is bad because you can't do miracles with small-and-thin camera modules after Nokia caught all that flak about the lardness of the N8 camera.
Of course, being Andrew, no mention of how the Maemo6 in the N9 was the modern platform Nokia needed and already had, with an app GRID, letter scroll shortcuts, Skype integration, Opera (which will never be ported to WP7 because of MS rules), and TWO days of battery life (and the N9 is a real Nokia in reception and call quality)
Something grumpy or grudging on every page, inadequate battery life, poor form factor & it still gets 80%. You are easily pleased, aren't you?
Nokia or MS? We know you work for one of them
(body) in the chest freezer
Empty shell compared to the N8
I have played briefly with samples of the 800 & 710 and it has the shiny shiny but no where near the customisable grunt I get from my current device.
Read/write from/to external USB memory being a big one.
Symbian may seem complicated to some but you can really make it do things that other phones just wont. Maybe its just me who like messing with settings & trying things out? FM transmitter too, proper useful.
Maybe the N8 was/is the pinnacle of what a phone can do & its all down hill from here in to the phones for nuggets sphere who like shiny over function, but I sincerly hope not.
Only gripe is that Orange take an age to release OTA updates, but other than that, boss!
Gonna take a lot more to prise me away from S^3
