Lumia 800

I just received a new Nokia Lumia 800.  I am planning on learning Windows phone development and this  Nokia will be my tester.

I have had an iPhone 4 (iOS 5.1) as my primary phone for a little more than a year so that is my basis for comparison. Out of the box the experience is similar to though not quite as nice as the iPhone.  Everything was easy to find except for how to open the door to the mini-usb connector used for charging.  I tried gently pressing the dimple beside the headphone jack as per the directions and got nothing.  After trying with increasing pressure and at different spots around the dimple I finally got it open.  A design consequence of this door is that there will likely be  no docking station/audio station for this phone.  I don't do that with the iPhone so it's no loss to me.

After getting the phone charged and hooked up to wifi I went for a spin through my Hotmail inbox and checked out a few web sites.

The Hotmail integration is nice but it seems to take longer to sync. My iPhone polls over time and syncs quite quickly though the interface is not as nice.

Web browsing is fast and the few sites that I've been to have not been a problem for the built in browser.  The web experience feels faster than my iPhone 4. Given that it has a 40% faster processor might explain the difference but 40% is easy to erase with inefficient code.  So far the browser seems quite good.

I still have problems getting around as the navigation is different than the iPhone.  I don't want to knock it for being different but I'm not comfortable getting to where I need to go yet.

Next stop is developing an app.  I haven't done anything .net for a long time so I'm hoping that my buddy Joe's book on Windows  Phone development will help me get started.

Sams Teach Yourself Windows Phone 7 Application Development in 24 Hours