Lumia 800 vs. Lumia 820

Francie Barrett

Have Nokia shot themselves in the foot once again with this?

Retailers have recently announced that the Lumia 800 is available for only £149 without a contract as they are trying to reduce stocks with the release of the 820 imminent. Considering that the only marginally better Lumia 820 will be asking for about £400, have Nokia just cut the legs from under the 820? I mean, the 820 will have NFC, WP8 and wireless charging, but can people really justify paying £250-odd quid more for such minor improvements?

Having said all that. I think the Lumia 800 is a bargain and I have will definitely be picking one up in the UK. For people who just want to take fairly reasonable snaps and be able to use social networking apps (like my wife!), £149 is way cheaper than the equivalent Android or Apple device.

Queerdub

Francie Barrett wrote: »

Have Nokia shot themselves in the foot once again with this?

Retailers have recently announced that the Lumia 800 is available for only £149 without a contract as they are trying to reduce stocks with the release of the 820 imminent. Considering that the only marginally better Lumia 820 will be asking for about £400, have Nokia just cut the legs from under the 820? I mean, the 820 will have NFC, WP8 and wireless charging, but can people really justify paying £250-odd quid more for such minor improvements?

Having said all that. I think the Lumia 800 is a bargain and I have will definitely be picking one up in the UK. For people who just want to take fairly reasonable snaps and be able to use social networking apps (like my wife!), £149 is way cheaper than the equivalent Android or Apple device.

No. The Lumia 800 is a year old, with single core processor, WP7.5 to go to 7.8 soon enough.
The 820/810 will be dual-core with WP8, better optics (albeit not Pureview), bigger screen and other improvements.

Given that most people buy on contract and not off, the pricing you're talking about is irrelevant. They will sell for zero to 99 dollars/euro on a 12-24 month contract depending on the carrier.
Given that the platform development path of WP8 is a lot clearer and the Lumia 800 is stuck on WP7.8 at most being on a 2 year contract does not matter.

The problem I see is that Tmobile USA are not getting the higher end Lumia 920 or a variant of this, so that's where Nokia may have issues.

Francie Barrett

Queerdub wrote: »

with single core processor, WP7.5 to go to 7.8 soon enough.

The WP7 v WP8 argument is overblown, especially considering that this is a mid-range phone whose users probably won't even know the difference anyway.

Queerdub wrote: »

better optics (albeit not Pureview)

It's the same lens.

Queerdub wrote: »

bigger screen

Bigger screen, poorer resolution.

The only tangible benefit the average user will get from having an 820 is the slightly improved performance due to the handset being dual core and having more RAM. My point was that for this negligible improvement, you are having to pay over double the price.

KingOfFairview

Francie Barrett wrote: »

Have Nokia shot themselves in the foot once again with this?

Retailers have recently announced that the Lumia 800 is available for only £149 without a contract as they are trying to reduce stocks with the release of the 820 imminent. Considering that the only marginally better Lumia 820 will be asking for about £400, have Nokia just cut the legs from under the 820? I mean, the 820 will have NFC, WP8 and wireless charging, but can people really justify paying £250-odd quid more for such minor improvements?

Having said all that. I think the Lumia 800 is a bargain and I have will definitely be picking one up in the UK. For people who just want to take fairly reasonable snaps and be able to use social networking apps (like my wife!), £149 is way cheaper than the equivalent Android or Apple device.

is there any indication we're getting a cut on the 800?

Francie Barrett

KingOfFairview wrote: »

is there any indication we're getting a cut on the 800?

Already have, a tiny bit more expensive here though.

http://www.o2online.ie/o2/shop/phones/nokia-lumia-800/209/

Still though, the Lumia 820 will be €500 here, so €200 for a 800 is much better value.

stevenmu

820 also has expandable storage via SD card.

Francie Barrett

stevenmu wrote: »

820 also has expandable storage via SD card.

The cheaper 800 has 16 gig storage, the more expensive 820 has 8 gig of storage.

stevenmu

Good point.

The 800 is definitely a very attractive phone at the current price, and it'll take a while before the differences with WP8 start to really show. There definitely is a danger that a lot of potential 820 customers will just buy an 800 now instead.

On the other hand, by getting a lot of 800s out there now, Nokia could benefit from a lot of word-of-mouth advertising. People will see there friends using them and when they go to the shops to get one, all the 800s will be gone and they'll have to get an 820.

evolutionqy7

stevenmu wrote: »

On the other hand, by getting a lot of 800s out there now, Nokia could benefit from a lot of word-of-mouth advertising. People will see there friends using them and when they go to the shops to get one, all the 800s will be gone and they'll have to get an 820.

Thats what I would see as the only good thing coming from this. There's a lot of people who probably would like to try it out, low price point might push them over the edge to do so.

Last year we had the Xperia Play, this year the Lumia 800

Francie Barrett

Ok, here's my mini review of the Lumia 800 from having played around with it for 3 days. It's the first time I have gotten a very hands on experience with Windows Phone, so excuse any inaccuracies.

The positives.

• In terms of bang for buck, picking up a Lumia 800 for less than €200 is simply unmatched by any other phone as of this moment. It's half the price of similar competitors like the Iphone 4s and the Samsung Galaxy S2.
• The WP OS itself really is a thing of beauty. Out of all the mobile OS's, it is undoubtedly the prettiest. Most importantly, it is also quick and responsive. I didn't really bother with games, but at no point did I feel performance of the device was suffering with day to day use. The only bit of lag I noticed was with Zune when I loaded the phone up with albums. In fairness, it wasn't too bad though. Also, for a novice, it's really easy to use.
• The hardware is as beautiful as the OS, but most importantly, it feels very sturdy, even if it isn't the largest of devices. The phone itself fits very well in the hand and I love the unibody construction and the raised convex screen. The only minor criticism is that the phone is probably too polished, it would have been nice if there was more grip to it.
• They onscreen keyboard was another surprise. It is excellent and I was surprised to see that it auto-completed my name when I tried to type an e-mail with the first letter of my name capitalised.

The negatives.

• Power users of smartphones are going to be left very frustrated by Windows Phone. Anyone coming from Android or Symbian is going to be pretty annoyed at the restrictions that the OS puts in place. Not being able to drag and drop your music to and from the device is a major one. While the Zune software isn't as bad as Itunes, I would still rather have the option to have control over media myself. Another thing that annoyed me is that while live tiles look great, it would be nice to get some widgets on your home screen to manage bluetooth, wifi, etc. Perhaps this kind of thing exists, I didn't find it.
• Camera/video isn't great, especially considering Nokia's long history with leading-edge optics. For €200, you can accept performance, but compared to peers like the SGS2 and Iphone 4s, it's definitely inferior.
• App store is poor compared to Android/Apple. While quantity is actually high, the quality that's poor. What annoyed me was that the search results were terrible. For example, I searched for the Twitter app, and first batch of returned results were all unofficial clients. Not only that, but the marketplace has an annoying habit of returning more obscure and rubbish apps ahead of what you're looking for. While I have seen Android an Apple having this problem, it's definitely worse on Windows Phone.

I feel sorry for Nokia on this phone to be honest. About 50% of the folks I know with Iphones use about 5% of the functionality of the device. Generally of these users, the 5% of functionality that they use is divided between Facebook/Whatsapp (90% of their use), browser (5% of their use), the latest fad app/game (DrawSomething, etc.) is the last 5% of their use. In other words, most Iphone users could save themselves a heck of a lot of money by just using a cheapo Lumia.



As a Nokia Symbian user though, this phone is just far too restrictive for me. I use my HDMI out cable a couple of times a week. I love the fact that my phone appears as mass storage on other computers. Multi-tasking is much superior. I don't want my facebook friends automatically linked with my phone contacts. So often, I found myself being frustrated that functionality that I was used to on Symbian was disabled on Windows Phone. The only features that I felt were an improvement over Symbian (for me at least) were social networking integration (Facebook+Twitter notifications appearing together is nice) and e-mail.

evolutionqy7

Francie Barrett wrote: »

I don't want my facebook friends automatically linked with my phone contacts.

When your in the people hub click the three little dots. Go to settings and turn of Facebook contact book :-)

You made some good fair point there too. I got the 800 for my mum and she has been very happy. I brought back an iPhone for her one day and she just found it boring and almost the functionality remained the same.

KingOfFairview

There's an app called shortcuts+ that lets you pin wifi, network data etc to the home screen

BostonB

Francie Barrett wrote: »

Ok, here's my mini review of the Lumia 800 from having played around with it for 3 days. It's the first time I have gotten a very hands on experience with Windows Phone, so excuse any inaccuracies....l.

I was considering one only for the comments I've read that the camera is quite poor as is the SQ for music etc. Can you expand on your experience of this?

evolutionqy7

BostonB wrote: »

Francie Barrett wrote: »

Ok, here's my mini review of the Lumia 800 from having played around with it for 3 days. It's the first time I have gotten a very hands on experience with Windows Phone, so excuse any inaccuracies....l.

I was considering one only for the comments I've read that the camera is quite poor as is the SQ for music etc. Can you expand on your experience of this?

Camera isn't bad. Unless your taking pictures in the dark all the time. Got lots of great pics from the 800 in good lighting its a brilliant camera. In the dark its crap.

Sound quality from the loud speaker is very shallow, lack of bass.

It's still better than any other phone in the market for that price.

rickyjb

Francie Barrett wrote: »

The negatives.

• Power users of smartphones are going to be left very frustrated by Windows Phone. Anyone coming from Android or Symbian is going to be pretty annoyed at the restrictions that the OS puts in place. Not being able to drag and drop your music to and from the device is a major one. While the Zune software isn't as bad as Itunes, I would still rather have the option to have control over media myself.

Does anyone know if WP8 will require Zune as well? This alone is probably the one thing that would stop me buying a Lumia 920.

simi956

Nope WP8 does not require/use Zune, it will work using Active Sync

stevenmu

rickyjb wrote: »

Does anyone know if WP8 will require Zune as well? This alone is probably the one thing that would stop me buying a Lumia 920.

Some WP8 devices will support SD cards. Details are still light on how this will work, but I'm hoping it'll allow drag and drop.

rickyjb

simi956 wrote: »

Nope WP8 does not require/use Zune, it will work using Active Sync

All I'm interested in is being able to see the basic folder structure and drag/drop files.

The Lumia 920 won't have a port for a microSDHC card, only the 820. Which I also think is ridiculous as this gives the less expensive 820 twice the storage capacity