Carpe Lumia!


You know that band you used to love when you were in your teens? They really rocked your adolescent years. They rocked like hell. Their concerts where one great party. I would never end. ….except you grew up, the times changed, so did the music, but the band stuck to what made them great. Fame faded, and slowly they disappeared from your sight. Maybe even their CD’s did not make it into your MP3 collection. They lost their mojo. Sometimes they still performed, but you did not know and even less cared. Sic transit gloria mundi. We all have such a band. If you ask politely and promise to keep it a secret, I’ll tell you mine ;-) .
Now suppose, just for the sake of this analogy, after years and years this band of yours got back together. Not to do a ‘one more time for old times’ sake or a Live Aid gig, no: they kick out the drug-addicted drummer, recruit two new young guitar players, a few cool babes as extra singers, and team up with a new song writer. They reinvent themselves, make a new album – totally different music than what they did before, but still keeping what made them great – a beautiful performance. They bring out their new album and they TOTALLY rock the charts.
Now if you try to imagine the WTF feeling that this would give you, and you get an idea what I had for a few moments when I first booted up the Nokia Lumia 800 that was delivered on October 4. Enough poetic mesmerizing, down to business. My thoughts on the Nokia Lumia 800. I’ll just follow the format I used for my HTC 7 Pro to make a fair comparison
The phone itself
It’s physical dimensions are 11.5 x 6 x 1 cm according to my own measurements, although I have to allow for a bit of uncertainty on the latter two because a cross-section on this phone would basically be an oval. The back side is convex, and so is the front side, i.e. the screen. This gives a very beautiful result. It weights 142 grams, which I don’t think is very much but it feels heavy – although I think solid would be a better way to describe it. The first thing that strikes – this s a different phone than what I am used to in Windows Phone arena. It’s beautiful. It has a smooth, streamlined look. And it feels that way, too. Its polycarbonate unibody design feels soft and it has nothing of this plasticy feel so common for these kind of devices. The hardware buttons are freakin’ made of metal – having used the Lumia for only a short time makes the camera button of the HTC 7 Pro like a wobbly piece of plastic on a cheap bubble contact. See below how this looks. Click for larger picture – as with all pictures in this post

The USB port is on the top, which I initially thought was very stupid for in-car use. When I attach a charger the plug would stick out of the top of the phone. Turned out I had not thought long enough about it. More