Having finally taken the plunge yesterday and bought the Nokia Lumia 800 to replace my trusty iPhone 3GS I thought I would write a real-life comparison from a user perspective that may assist others in their choice between Lumia and iPhone.
The biggest difference in appearance has been the screen - the clarity and sharpness is a street ahead of my old iPhone 3GS. The latest iPhone 5 may have a better screen than the 3GS but the Nokia Lumia 800 still compares very well.
So far the biggest positives have been:
- Excellent screen, both resolution and clarity/colours
- Spellchecker and autocorrect far more useful than iOS/iPhone
- People hub to connect social activity is fantastic and the level of integration is great
- Group texting! Something that was never possible on iPhone. On Lumia, create a group and choose whether you want to email or text the members - simple!
And the negatives
- Limited apps eg no Dropbox
- Fonts take some getting used to
- Screen actions differ to iOS/iPhone eg hold to delete
- No dedicated silent button as per iPhone
Overall with less than 24 hours usage I am very impressed with the phone and cannot wait to see the improvements with the Windows Phone 7.8 update and test the new Lumia 920 with WP8 when it is released.