I've Joined the Nokia Amazing Collective!

15:46 Pippa Ainsworth 0 Comments

The Friday before Christmas saw me making the trek from my home to a small phone shop in Warrington, by public transport. This wasn't the best way to spend that day as I still had a million and one things to do for Christmas and it was also raining torrentially so I knew I was going to get soaked. My destination, the little phone shop, was well worth the journey as I had been chosen to receive Nokia's new Lumia 800 smartphone and to join their Amazing Collective. I had been invited to go and pick it up and receive a demonstration of my new phone so off I went. In doing so I became part of Nokia's Amazing Collective, a community of early adopters of the Nokia Lumia who will use their new phones to answer various challenges posted by the company.


I've mentioned before my antipathy towards my old phone, the Blackberry Curve 8250, it just didn't do anything it was supposed to. I've been thinking about a smartphone to replace this one but, as I wasn't due an upgrade until August, all I could do was look. I've long been a fan of Nokia phones. I used to have an N97 which was an amazing phone, I loved it but I upgraded to a Sony Ericcson and then the cursed Blackberry simply because Nokia didn't really seem to be competing with their range. All that has now changed. In February 2011 Nokia and Microsoft announced that they were going to team up to produce a new phone, to challenge the Apple iPhone and the various Google Android handsets available. The Lumia 800 is the result.


So, inital thoughts? I love my new phone. The interface is really easy to use and I've been able to link up all my various accounts to it with ease. The bliss of being able to tweet from my phone is amazing having been without an app for this with the now departed Blackberry. The home screen (pictured above) features a People hub where you can easily see what people are saying on Twitter and Facebook (or Windows Live, Linkedin etc) I generally use this to keep an eye on Facebook as I have downloaded the dedicated Twitter application. You also have a 'Me' button and this is brilliant. It updates every time you are mentioned in a tweet or receive a notification on Facebook, I check this all the time and find it so useful.

The camera is excellent. I've been using it to take photos quite a lot this week as I misplaced by digital camera. It has 8MP to play with and auto focus, great for taking photos out and about. There is also a dedicated camera button on the side of your phone which makes it easy to get snapping. I'm going to have a play around with the camera to see what I can actually achieve with it and will post again in the future.

Lots of smartphones have questionable quality when it comes to the basics - like making a phone call. I have a friend with an iPhone who, whenever he phones me on it, spends much of the time complaining about how irritating it is to make calls with. The Lumia 800 has none of this, the line is crystal clear and the options for your call are all visible on the screen when you are on a call so you can press hold, switch to loudspeaker or anything else you require with ease.

My Lumia 800 has lots of other apps pre-installed which I haven't had chance to play with yet. Nokia Drive is included and, as we have broken our Sat Nav unit I intend to try this out when we go away for the weekend at the end of the month. Again, I'll blog about it and let you know my thoughts. I'll also be making use of Local Scout and the Maps app then.

I plan to share my responses to some of the Amazing Collective challenges. So far, we have had challenges asking for photos of people sleeping, food-7 lookalikes, Christmas decorations, and dancing amongst others. Every time I complete a challenge I can upload my new album to Facebook for my friends to like. When I do so I win points for the leaderboard where overall prizes, and some challenge-based prizes, can be won.

I'm so excited to have my Nokia Lumia 800 and looking forward to sharing it's functions with you, and the fun I have with it through The Amazing Collective on Facebook.

I received the Nokia Lumia 800 free of charge from Nokia in return for promoting it through my blog and Facebook. The thoughts and opinions in this post are all my own.