Comparesion Nokia Lumia 820 vs Nokia Lumia 800

We compare Nokia’s Lumia 800 to its newly announced successor the Lumia 820

When Nokia joined forces with Microsoft last year plenty of eyebrows were raised but the company’s first run of Lumia devices were a success. Their build quality, good looks and great performance coupled with Microsoft’s rapidly improving OS vindicated the Finns’ decision to ally with Redmond’s finest – and things are about to go from strength to strength for the pair of them.

Nokia’s newest Lumia’s are finally upon us, and the devices look fantastic – but how do they measure up to last year’s best? Well, let’s measure the new Lumia 820 against the Lumia 800 to find out!

Display

The Nokia Lumia 800 features a 3.7-inch AMOLED touchscreen which operates at a resolution of 480 x 800 and offers a pixel density of 252PPI.

The screen is coated with Gorilla Glass giving it the edge in terms of resilience and is also very responsive and, as you would expect, it offers great performance with vivid colours, decent viewing angles and deep blacks.

The Lumia 820 features a 4.3-inch AMOLED screen which operates at a resolution of 480 x 800. As you would expect, the display’s pixel density is lower owing to the extra screen real estate but 217PPI seems like a reasonable exchange for some bonus screen space.

The display is just as impressive as the Lumia 800’s in terms of performance, offering good colour reproduction, solid viewing angles and low power demands.

Winner – Draw

Software

Nokia Lumia 800 – Windows Phone 7

Nokia Lumia 820 – Windows Phone 8

Just because the two devices share a common name when speaking of their OS, don’t make the mistake of thinking that they’re only an evolutionary step apart, because they aren’t. Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 makes use of aspects of the Windows 8 kernel, giving smartphone users a highly updated experienced, which brings with it a host of new features.

The new version of the OS offers a new browser in IE10, upgraded security abilities, Nokia maps with offline mapping and support for dual-core CPU’s, a new look start screen, support for screenshots (at last!) and a whole lot more to boot.

Along with those virtues it’s also fast, very user friendly and will be able to make use of all the apps written for Windows Phone 7, which gives it a decent software library right off the bat – good huh?

Windows Phone 7 is still a good smartphone platform, but when compared with the newer software its drawbacks are far more evident. It’s still fast, still feels natural to use and still benefits from a rapidly growing app library in Microsoft’s Windows Phone Marketplace, but the lack of widgets, support for removable storage and no support for multi-core processors really held/holds the OS back.

Winner – Nokia Lumia 820

Camera

The Nokia Lumia 820 features an 8-megapixel primary camera with autofocus, Carl Zeiss Tessar lens, F2.2, dual LED flash, 1080 video capture and geo-tagging.

The device captures some superb still images and captured movies are of a very high standard too.

The Lumia 820 also benefits from a front-facing VGA camera for video calling.

The Nokia Lumia 800 also benefits from an 8-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus, dual LED flash and geo-tagging, but the device only captures 720P video and lacks a secondary camera for video calling.

Still images are of a good standard with the Lumia 800, and in the right light are more than print worthy, but the upgraded lens and software enhancements on offer in the newer device raise it up a level.

Winner – Nokia Lumia 820

Form

Nokia Lumia 820 - 123.8 x 68.5 x 9.9mm, 160g

Nokia Lumia 800 - 116.5 x 61.2 x 12.1mm, 142g

Both devices are hewn from polycarbonate and offer amazing resilience and peerless build quality. They’re both colourful and easy on the eye too and you can be assured that, as they’re both Nokia’s, they’ve both had to pass the most discriminating drop test in the mobile phone world.

The Lumia 820’s aesthetics offer a newer, curvier take on the original design though, with the camera sitting high on the chassis rather than central as with the Lumia 800. The device looks more up to date overall but shares many of its design traits with its predecessor – and this isn’t a bad thing.

The Lumia 800 is a good looking device. Its colourful chassis with squared off ends brought something new to the market last year and it still looks and feels like a premium smartphone 12 months on. While there isn’t much to separate it from the newer device we feel that the new design gives the Lumia 820 a minor edge though, and as such the round.

Winner – Nokia Lumia 820

Power

The Lumia 800 is powered by a 1.4GHz Scorpion CPU and also offers an Adreno 205 GPU, 512MB RAM and 16GB of on-board storage, though it lacks support for a micro SD card.

The device performs well, with no noticeable slowdown and is great fun for gaming and watching the occasional TV show; provided your eyes can cope with the 3.7-inch screen.  Compared to many of the mid-range Android devices on offer it does feel a tad laboured at times though.

The Lumia 820 features a dual-core Qualcomm S4 CPU clocked to 1.5GHz, giving it a huge speed boost over the 800. The device also sports an Adreno 225 GPU, 1GB RAM and 8GB of on-board storage space, as well as a slot for micro SD cards – hooray!

The 820 feels lots quicker than its predecessor, unsurprisingly, and the speed boost and addition of removable memory support gives it a huge edge, not just against the 800, but against many other mid-range smartphones on the market.

Winner – Nokia Lumia 820

And the winner is…

Nokia Lumia 820

The upgraded Lumia 820 is a fantastic device. It’s fast, good looking and packs Microsoft’s new OS, which itself is a marked upgrade over previous iterations of its smartphone software. The device should certainly be considered an option if you’re looking to upgrade, even if you already own the Lumia 800.

That said the Nokia Lumia 800 is a good smartphone too, but one which is soon to be left behind by its manufacturer and OS developer alike. If you’re buying new you’d be mad to choose the older device over the new – but if you can pick one up for a bargain price it’s still a very nice mobile.