The long-awaited day for Nokia and Microsoft has finally arrived. At a well-attended press event held in London on October 26, Nokia allowed a first glimpse at Lumia, a new smartphone powered by Windows Phone Mango. Lumia is the first collaboration in earnest between the Finnish cell phone giant and Microsoft, and it could be considered a solid move on Nokia’s part to shake up the smartphone supremacy currently held by Apple’s iPhone.
The Lumia 800 is a sleek smartphone similar in shape to the N9. It is available in three color schemes: traditional glossy black, fashionable bluish-green, and jazzy magenta. Once the assembled journalists were sufficiently wowed by Lumia’s looks, Nokia’s Kevin Shields, a former VP at Microsoft, took the stage to highlight the features of the new Windows smartphone.
The Lumia smartphones run on a powerful mobile operating system: Windows Phone 7.5 Mango. The Lumia’s highly responsive 3.7 inch curved Amoled touchscreen is the perfect input device for the intuitive Windows Mango user interface. Kevin Shields showed the Home Screen, a feature that effectively replaces the dreaded Start Menu and desktop of previous Windows versions. On the Home Screen Lumia users can glimpse at information provided by Live Tiles, a replacement for the current iconography seen across mobile operating systems like Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android. Live Tiles are constantly updated with relevant information through Lumia’s data connections, and they organize apps and information into separate hubs for work, social network, gaming, music, and more.
Everything that Windows users have come to expect from Microsoft has been packed into the Nokia Lumia. A simple screen tap on a productivity or work tile can open Microsoft Office documents for reading and editing. Lumia makes it possible to seamlessly work on Excel spreadsheets or Word documents stored on cloud servers thanks to Windows Live SkyDrive.
The nice Nokia touches that the company added into its pre-Windows smartphones have been enhanced. Nokia Music has been revamped to look like the sadly departed Microsoft Zune player, although it now comes with a free streaming service. Nokia Maps has also been augmented to track public transportation data from around the world. Nokia Maps integration with Microsoft Bing and Foursquare means that Lumia users will be able to look at the world through a detailed bird’s eye view.
Not much was revealed about the gaming capabilities of the Lumia at Nokia World, although Xbox branding is ever-present and Xbox Live avatars can be implemented. Future apps may interact with Xbox Live and Kinect. Rovio’s hugely popular Angry Birds game app is included.
Social networking on the Lumia is a delight thanks to the People Hub. Photos taken with the Lumia’s Karl Zeiss-equipped camera can be instantly tagged and shared on Facebook. Twitter updates and profile photos can be glanced on the Live Tiles as soon as they arrive.
The Lumia 800 is priced at approximately $420 -$637- and may not be available in the United States until 2012. The Lumia 710 will cost less, about $432, but will allow users to personalize their smartphones with interchangeable back covers.
