I got a chance to play around with Nokia Lumia 800 today. Thought of just jotting down what I like & dislike about the device. The device was with me for about an hour, so I consider this as first impression rather than a detailed review.

Build – It felt like a piece of chocolate!

One thing which no one can beat Nokia is, the build quality. Lumia 800 gives a great feeling when you hold it, unlike Samsung, it doesn’t feel like a cheap plastic finish. Power button is placed on the right side rather than usual top position. So it took me few minutes to turn it on, but it’s just one time surprise & you will get used to it later. Top of the phone consists slots for micro SD card & micro SIM card. Again little unusual to see those slots on top. One more turn-off was micro SIM slot. Yes, you read it right, you need to either have to use a SIM cutter or get a micro SIM replacement from your telecom operator to switch to this phone.

User Interface – Buttery Smooth!

“Buttery Smooth” was the term used by the Nokia person who gave the demo & it indeed is buttery smooth. UI was very responsive with amazing smooth transition effects. There was no evidence of lag anywhere. Lumia comes with two themes, light & dark, I liked dark theme more. Pinning a contact, bookmark or an app shortcut to the home screen makes it easy to access stuff we need often. Landscape mode isn’t supported on many places of the phone.

Browser – IE9 isn’t bad!

Being a developer, I know how much IE sucks. Half of the web designers time goes in making things work on IE! But IE9 is standard compliant unlike older versions. Lumia comes with IE9 as default browser & rendering is surprisingly great. Pages loaded quite fast, looked crisp & pinch to zoom was flawless. Interestingly the address bar is at the bottom unlike any other mobile browser & I personally felt its a good usability tweak.

I couldn’t try much of other great features like Camera, Nokia Drive, XBOX Live, Windows Office etc. Overall it looked like a very well made phone. What lacks in this smart phone is apps developed by developer community. It’s no way comparable to Android or iOS. But Nokia in association Microsoft are putting their best efforts in encouraging developers to develop apps on Windows Phone platform. So, we might see great development in days to come.