Nokia Lumia 800 review
March 30, 2012 4 Comments
Thanks to Gen-i and The Leading Edge I have taken receipt of a brand new Nokia Lumia 800 handset. As a Microsoft house, I am keen to see the senior team use Windows mobiles instead of the Android ones but up until now there hasnt really been anything of quality to use. The Lumia 800 promises to work well with Sharepoint so I am giving it a test drive.
Unpacking was nice, instead of the usual lift off boxtop we pull the innards out, revealing the handset. Drilling through the packaging we get the users manual, a rubberised protective case and then to the lower level with headset, USB cable and wall charger. I like the idea of a round charger, fits MUCH better into a power board, unlike pretty much every other charger that seems intent on taking up at least 2 sockets. Searched for a battery, before realising it is already in the handset and has a partial charge. In the had, the handset feels nice, curved edges and a weight that says ‘I am here’ but not too much that suggests its a brick.
The setup of the handset was quick and painless. Sign in with a Windows Live account and a Nokia account and you are done (or sign up for them as you go). For me the portrait keyboard is a little small, but even with my big fat male fingers it was responsive and no errors were keyed.
So onto setting up corporate email. On other handsets this has been painful, having to enter email addresses, domain logins and OWA settings. With the Lumia I entered my email address and password, it came almost straight back for my Active Directory username and password and then it started syncing, and fast! 174 Contacts were copied from the SIM in seconds and I was ready to go. I was ready to test the Sharepoint integration so connected the phone to the corporate wireless network, clicked into Office and into Sharepoint. As expected, it couldn’t load my live site as it is running SP2007, but it prompted me to open it in a browser. I did that was was really surprised at how fast it loaded and how usable it was. Flicked into a document library and opened a spreadsheet faster than I could on my laptop!
I am in the process of upgrading to Sharepoint 2010 so pointed the Lumia at the UAT site. Instantly connected and had all the sites and libraries available. One thing I did note was the look & feel goes out the window, you have a list view instead of the traditional website view as can be seen in the photo to the left. Undecided how I feel about that right now, from a navigation view it does make it easier and faster, but if I am investing in branding I want to see it.
The Marketplace seems good. I know a lot of people have said there is nothing there (well okay only 60k apps versus 500k for Android or whatever the numbers are) but quantity isn’t always a good measure. There are plenty of good free and paid-for apps available right now, and I would be almost prepared to argue that the ones there are more useful than a lot on the other two OS’s. Going to spend a bit of time today and over the weekend seeing what else this bad boy can do I think, but initial thoughts are bye-bye Android, hello Microsoft!