My test Lumia 800 arrived....and it's going back on Monday

So I'm back from Holidays, and a Lumia 800 that Nokia sent me was waiting for me. I was super excited to give this a try, as I hadn't really sat down with Windows Phone 7 properly.

The hardware and the packaging were very well done, nice materials, comes with a case, all good.

Then the downhill spiral started....I turned it on.

I currently have a HTC Velocity 4G, and when I was buying this, the fight was between it, an iPhone 4S, and a Galaxy Nexus. I would normally default to the iPhone, but I wanted to try the android universe. And while I would have preferred the battery life and the stock ICS on the Galaxy, I just couldn't get past the Pentile display. The jagged edges of text and other UI elements is a constant distraction to using the phone. The Lumia's screen, with the lower res, makes this worse. I've got a feeling the UI of Windows Phone 7 doesn't help this either, with it's stark contrasting colours and skinny fonts. I've used my friend's HTC Mozart (with a Super LCD screen) for a short period of time, and the screen on that was fine, great even.

That's my only gripe about the phone hardware itself. A SLCD, or possible a SAMOLED+ screen would have fixed this. So straight away I can't recommend this phone.

Now onto Windows Phone 7. I couldn't get my gmail to work, so I was pretty much dead in the water for contacts, calendar and email (all of which I use google for). It appears to be a common problem, however not an easily replicated problem. Turns out Google was having a bit of a hissy fit over Friday night with new Sync connections, so I'll give this another go. On top of this, the review unit was for UMTS 900Mhz, and I'm on Next G (850Mhz) so reception at home was lousy to say the least.

If I could get it on 850Mhz and get gmail working, Windows Phone might be an option, so I'll reserve my comment on that when I can get my hands on a phone that works to use for a few weeks.



But my god that Pentile screen has GOT to go.