The Nokia Lumia 800 has finally gone on sale after much hype. It’s a huge launch for both Nokia and Microsoft, the former having begun the process of phasing out its use of the Symbian OS, and the latter hoping that it can finally gain a foothold in the mobile world.

Windows Phone is a great OS, as polished as any other smartphone platform. However it is also very new, and its success may depend on how well its users adapt to some of the new concepts it introduces.

If you’re new to the Lumia 800, or any other Windows Phone device, check out our collection of tips, tutorials and apps below to help get you started.

Customise the Windows Phone home screen

Keep your Windows Phone up to date

Use the Maps app in Windows Phone

Get started with Zune Desktop

Set up and use email in Windows Phone

Switching from Android to Windows Phone

Top 10 Windows Phone apps

If you have happened to stroll over to the Windows Phone blog recently, you may have seen the detailed list of emoticons available for Windows Phone users. Most of is know the basic emoticons, smiley face anyone? But do you reckon you could get a storm cloud emoticon without needing to refer to this list? I seriously doubt it. Take a look at the first ‘cheat sheet’ below!

As part of setting up your new Windows Phone device, you’ll almost certainly have either created a new Windows Live ID or used an existing one – such a thing is a fundamental part of using Windows Phone online. Which means you’ll automatically have email access to a Hotmail Inbox – the default is to have this on one of the foremost homescreen tiles. But what about your Gmail account? What about your company email? What about your old ISP email account? Don’t worry, these are easy to add and access too.

Step 1: Hotmail is a given
First things first though. Your Hotmail email account will be in place, tap on the homescreen ‘Hotmail’ tile to get to this, your Hotmail/Live.com/Live.co.uk mailbox. You’ll probably already be very familiar with swiping this view up and down (to read other messages) and left and right (to view just ‘unread’ or ‘urgent’ items), which is good because this is the application that will consolidate all your email.

Step 2: And there’s more…
On the right hand side of the toolbar you’ll see a small panel with ‘…’ on it, the shortcut symbol for ‘More’. Tap it and you’ll see two things happen. Well, three including the toolbar floating up the screen. The existing toolbar icons gain descriptions, which may be helpful if you’ve always wondered what the icons meant! Most importantly though, extra functions come into view, including the interesting ‘add email account’.

Step 3: Email account types
Tap on ‘add email account’ and you’ll see a variety of other common email account types – we’re going to add a Gmail one, a corporate account and a legacy ISP account, all of which are handled here.

Step 4: Adding a Gmail account
Starting with the simplest, Gmail, tap on ‘Google’ and enter your Gmail address and password.

Step 5: There will be a short delay…
After a few seconds while your mailbox is queried and mail headers retrieved, your Gmail should appear in the usual way, but this time all through the email client in Windows Phone!

Step 6: Access to your new account
But how to get to this email in future? Handily, Windows Phone saves you having to ‘pin’ anything to the homescreen by automatically adding a new tile for each email account to the homescreen. As at Windows Phone 7, it’s a ‘dumb’ panel, but this should be improved in the upcoming Mango update. You’ll also see each new mailbox appear as its own entity in the homescreen ‘applications’ list, for convenience.

Step 7: Editing your signature
Having got into your new (in this case, Gmail) mailbox, tap on ‘…’ again and tap on ‘settings’ – there’s a lot you can tweak for email retrieval! First stop is to edit your email signature, you can have multiple lines, so knock yourself out and put in any contact information you need to plus, yes, perhaps leave in the obligatory ‘Sent from my Windows Phone’ bit so that people know you’re replying while mobile and therefore many not have responded in your usual depth.

Step 8: Advanced settings and data types
Also well worth diving into are the ‘synchronisation settings’. For ‘Download new content’, if you’re offered ‘as items arrive’ then it’s worth a try. Don’t worry too much about your smartphone using extra battery power doing this – a Windows Phone smartphone is going to be online all the time anyway. Depending on the email source, you may also be offered the chance to synchronise Contacts and Calendar – worth taking if you’re a big Google fan, in this case, as all your Gmail contacts (etc.) will come down from the cloud.

Step 9: Corporate Exchange email
Another way to add an email account is to go to ‘Settings’ on your homescreen and tap on ‘email & accounts’. Tap on ‘add an account’ and you’ll see the same choices as before. Let’s get going with a corporate email account now. Assuming your company uses a Microsoft Exchange server, tap on ‘Outlook’ and then enter your email address and password. After a few seconds, you’ll be bounced towards a more corporate login page, with a field for username and (importantly) ‘domain’ – this is where the Exchange server sits – check with your IT department if you’re not sure what to put here.

Step 10: IMAP and POP3 email
If you need to access any other email account type in the world, you should find that the ‘other account’ option suffices. Windows Phone will try and pick up mailbox settings from your email address, but if it can’t then it’ll pop up an ‘Advanced’ button, taking you to a new section of the wizard. Pick the type (“Exchange” or “Internet email”), with the latter including all older POP3 and IMAP4 mailboxes – be warned that you’ll need details of incoming and outgoing mail servers and any authentication. The chances are that you have all this written down somewhere from your last set up of a PC or Mac email application? If in doubt, ask your ISP or email provider, as appropriate.

Step 11: A real pleasure
Once set up, all these accounts appear in the same way on your Windows Phone homescreen. And, with the OS’s smooth kinetic scrolling and behind the scenes multitasking, you’ll hopefully find that mobile email is a real pleasure on Windows Phone.

Created at first as a competitor to Apple’s iTunes and iPods, Microsoft’s Zune software has been through a rocky few years. But it’s now pretty mature and, with the rise of Microsoft’s SkyDrive and Windows Phone 7, makes for a well managed interface between Windows media and your shiny new smartphone. Having said all that, many of its functions are best off managed directly from the phone and, in addition, there are a few notes and gotchas to be aware of when using Zune Desktop – here are some pointers if you’re new to the Windows Phone platform and its Windows (media-centric) connectivity software.

Step 1: Platforms and requisites
There are huge caveats before we start. Obviously, you’ve got to have a PC running Windows. Ideally Windows 7 – if you have Vista then there’s an extra ‘Platform pack’ that you’ll be prompted to install when you first try to do something interesting in Zune Desktop. Secondly, Zune Desktop (which you should grab directly from zune.net, rather than using a CD that might have come with your phone) takes a while to install fully. Allow a good 30 minutes. Thirdly, so does Microsoft Live Essentials, which is also needed, if you haven’t got it on your hard disk already. Allow another 30 minutes.

Step 2: Commercial interests
Next, bear in mind Zune Desktop’s origins and Microsoft’s commercial intentions – Zune Desktop is fully functional in many areas but is most definitely slanted towards media and towards getting you to buy (or, in some cases, rent) apps, DRM-ed music, videos and more from Microsoft’s Marketplace. You’ll probably want to do some buying anyway, so all this commercialism isn’t necessarily a problem, but we wanted to warn you anyway. Zune Desktop may act a little fast and loose with your online wallet!

Step 3: Eye candy
An hour or two (and a few cups of tea) later, you’re up and running and admiring the eye candy that characterises Zune Desktop. In many ways, it’s done to mirror the Metro UI in Windows Phone 7 itself, with sliding panes, thumbnails of your content as playback window backdrops, and plenty of drag and drop. Zune Desktop’s core modules are ‘quickplay’, ‘collection’, ‘marketplace’, ‘social’ and ‘phone’, each of which we’ll dive into below.

Step 4: ‘quickplay’
‘quickplay’ is for people choosing to use Zune Desktop as their primary media player. OK, that’s possibly unlikely, but note for now that you can right click on any media item and choose ‘Pin to Quickplay’, giving you a bookmark system for favourite videos, photos and tracks.

Step 5: Windows media content
‘collection’ is where most of your media (on your Windows PC) is catalogued, here showing the music files found. Note the tabs for videos, pictures and podcasts. It’s a competent organisational system, so have a browse around.

Step 6: Video handling
If media on your PC isn’t picked up automatically, you can drag and drop it into the Zune Desktop window or (failing that) into the ready made ‘Zune’ shortcuts in Windows Explorer. There’s another caveat to note here in that these videos aren’t the files that your phone will end up playing – Zune Desktop transcodes everything down to lower resolution and bitrate to save space on the phone. This does introduce a delay later on when syncing your phone as you’ve got to wait for this process to finish.

Step 7: Sharing a photo from Zune Desktop
If you’ve created media on your Windows Phone then it’ll appear in these tabs, ready for onward sharing. For example, to share a photo you’ve taken (here displayed in ‘pictures’), click on the pop-up icon labelled ‘Edit and share with Windows Live Photo Gallery’.

Step 8: SkyDrive upload
Your photo then gets uploaded to your SkyDrive account and you can highlight any images there and ‘Share’ them with the world. Unfortunately, any descriptions and tags from Windows Live Photo Gallery seem to get lost, but perhaps this is a glitch that Microsoft can fix. You’ll be given the chance to choose to share at full resolution (recommended, as this is something that can’t currently be done on the phone).

Step 9: Your photo in place
And here’s the uploaded image in place in your Photos stash on Windows Live in the cloud. It’s true that this whole process could involve less steps, let’s see how the software evolves.

Step 10: Podcasts too
There’s also a (rudimentary) ‘podcasts’ section of ‘collection’, where you can paste in the RSS feed URLs of podcasts you love and they’ll be auto-gathered and synced later to your phone. There’s no podcast directory, mind you, so you’ll have to look up and type (or paste) in the right addresses to get started.

Step 11: Buying and renting things
‘marketplace’ is the main place in Zune Desktop where you buy stuff, of course. For example, click on ‘videos’ and you can then browse through commercial films, view their trailers and then buy or rent them online in either desktop-optimised or device-optimised formats. Note that the ‘search’ box at the top right of Zune Desktop works right across all content types in ‘marketplace’ and is a good way to find items that match a certain name (see also main image, left).

Step 12: ‘social’ and ‘phone’
Finally, ‘social’ is a messaging and contacts system that seems geared towards Xbox gamers and Zune music users (you’re identified as ‘PLAYER8272792′ etc.) and is probably best left alone for casual smartphone users. ‘phone’ is the final module and only appears when your Windows Phone is connected, showing the media items it currently contains. For photos, videos etc. that aren’t synced automatically, you can drag and drop content onto the phone icon at the bottom-left of the screen, which appears when the device is connected.

Conceived originally as an answer to Google Maps, Microsoft’s Bing Maps is understandably a year or two behind in development. But it’s part of Windows Phone 7, follows the same user interface style, supports full multi-touch and is still a very useful application, as you’ll see here.

From exploring the world, virtually, to finding things and businesses, and then navigating to them, albeit with a little fingerwork needed as you drive or walk, Bing Maps is well worth getting to know.

Step 1: Adding Bing Maps to the homescreen

Although it’s unlikely that your Windows Phone manufacturer has put in a homescreen tile for Bing Maps, you can easily add one yourself by swiping left and long pressing ‘Maps’ in the apps list. From the pop-up menu, tap on ‘pin to start’. You can also pin individual locations, as you’ll see later.

Step 2: Finding your location on the Earth’s surface

With a good view of the sky, with a SIM card active in your phone and with ‘Settings>Location services’ (including GPS) turned ‘On’, your smartphone should find your current location and display it quite quickly. If a different map is shown (for example, where you were when you last used it) then tap on the ‘position’ icon, central on the toolbar – Bing Maps will re-centre the map and zoom right in.

Step 3: You are… within this circle

Your estimated position is marked with a yellow diamond, but you’ll almost certainly also see a bold circle around this, at least at first. This represents the uncertainty in the position fix, usually because a good GPS lock hasn’t been possible so far. In other words, you could be anywhere within the circle. Also, note that you may see either an aerial view or a vector road map here – it depends how far you’re zoomed in. Get up very close and Bing Maps automatically swaps in a satellite photo, for extra detail.

Step 4: Multi-touch

As on the iPhone, there’s full multi-touch here and it’s worth getting to grips with the interface. Pinch two fingers in on the capacitive screen to zoom out, splay them apart to zoom in, as you’d expect. And, of course, you can drag the map around as needed to pan to a different area. If you need to move a significant distance, it’s often quicker to zoom out, pan across and then zoom in again. At any point, tapping the ‘position’ icon again will re-centre the map on your location.

Step 5: Searching for places or things

To look for a place or business, tap on the ‘search’ icon in the Bing Maps toolbar (not the hardware Search button/icon, note!) Typical searches might be, for example, “Chequers Way”, to find a road, or just “Chequers”, to find either a road name or (in this case) a pub with that in its title. Or perhaps a business type, e.g. “tyres”, to find the nearest tyre and exhaust centre for an emergency repair. Experiment!

Step 6: Search matches around your location

In each case, possible matches around your current location are shown with black flags and numbers – tap on the one whose name you want to see.

Step 7: Picking a match

Tap a named match (if it’s not the one you really wanted, tap on ‘…’ and then on ‘results list’ and pick another) and you’ll see a full page of information, with the match’s postal address, phone number, website and – crucially – an option to find ‘directions from my location’. Now, Bing Maps currently has no real time navigation features, but it certainly can have a stab at finding a fastest route.

Step 8: Navigation… of sorts!

Tap on ‘directions’ and, after a few seconds calculation, Bing Maps will go ‘split-screen’, with a zoomed in map of each junction in the route and detailed instructions for each junction in a scrolling pane below. As you drag this pane up and down (i.e. as you move through your route), the map section pans to show each junction and what you should do. None of this is real time and, watching the usual yellow diamond representing your position, it will be up to you to scroll down the route as needed. But as a rough and ready navigation system it does offer some help. And yes, Microsoft have a much better, real time version planned for Windows Phone Mango.

Step 9: Copying directions

Some people will prefer to have these instructions in paper form, so it’s worth noting that long pressing on any part of the directions list pops up the option to ‘copy directions’ to the system clipboard – you can then (for example) paste these into an email or Office file, as needed, perhaps for printing off from a desktop.

Step 10: Saving a location to the homescreen

With any search match or location’s details up on-screen, notice the ‘pin’ icon in the bottom toolbar. Tap this to ‘pin’ this location (along with a small thumbnail map memory jogger) to your Windows Phone homescreen. At any later point, just tap this to get back to the details screen and then tap the thumbnail again to view it on the wider map of the area.

Written by Steve Litchfield

Although some way behind Google’s Android in terms of slick OS updates – after all, the important bit here is all done via a Windows PC utility, Windows Phone 7 updates do largely work as advertised. It’s a new platform and we thought you might like to see how updates work. Both of the firmware variety and of third party applications – it’s all here. As with any smartphone OS, expect regular (monthly or quarterly) updates as the platform evolves, plus weekly updates to the various apps you have installed – depending on the developer!

Step 1: Pop-up notifications
Although, as we’ll see, firmware updates are entirely driven from a Windows desktop, it’s useful (if galling) to be notified of updates on the phone itself. Here’s what you’ll see pop up (fig 1), even as you’re using the phone as normal. Hopefully a future update for Windows Phone will bring in Android-style over-the-air updates!

Step 2: Checking manually
Although you have no control over when the phone automatically checks for updates, you can at least manually show its status. Go into ‘Settings>Phone update’ and you may see a discreet note ‘Update available’. Tapping on it doesn’t, sadly, do anything useful, apart from possible unsubscribe you from future update notifications (fig 2).

Step 3: Time to plug in
To get going with an update to your Windows Phone 7 phone, plug it in via microUSB to your Windows PC (fig 3). You’ll need to have the Zune Desktop installed, of course (see the FAQ below). Be patient, Windows may well pop up some ‘Installing….’ device driver messages, especially the first time you use this phone in that particular USB port.

Step 4: Update available
Once recognised by Zune Desktop, your phone will have its status checked and the update will be highlighted in no uncertain terms (“UPDATE YOUR PHONE”!) – we’re glad to see the detail on this screen, with version number and a list of changes/fixes – well done, Microsoft. We’ll proceed for now, though you can of course come back and do the update on a subsequent connection if you like.

Step 5: The 10 stage update!
Zune Desktop takes charge of the update and keeps you informed throughout the 10 stage process, the whole of which includes a device backup (just in case) and which should take up to half an hour (so time to slope off for a coffee). When finished, your Windows Phone 7 phone is automatically rebooted (fig 5). You’re done! Disconnect the phone and start enjoying the new firmware.

Step 6: Application update notification
Also essential on the update front is keeping up with improvements to your third party applications, of course. On the ‘live tiles’ homescreen, you may see a number printed next to the shopping basket icon on the ‘Marketplace’ tile (fig 6) – this is the number of updates available.

Step 7: Update all
Tap on the Marketplace tile and you’ll see the update count confirmed at the bottom of the Marketplace homescreen. Tap this and you’ll be in ‘app updates’, as shown in fig 7. Happily, there’s a handy ‘Update all’ button.

Step 8: Downloading and installing
Tap this button and, one by one, the application updates will be downloaded and installed (fig 8). You don’t have to wait while this happens, by the way. Although Windows Phone 7 doesn’t have multitasking for third party apps, its own built-in applications can operate in the background. So feel free to press the Start icon and do something else on the phone while your apps get updated.

Microsoft’s concept for the Windows Phone 7 homescreen is of ‘Live Tiles’, the idea being that each tile is not only a launcher button for the appropriate application or ‘hub’, it’s also capable of displaying relevant information, such as upcoming Calendar appointments and latest social photo updates. Now, Windows Phone is still fledgling in terms of raw functionality, but already there’s enough in its homescreen for us all to ‘get’ the idea and to have enormous fun customising our devices to our own needs and preferences. No doubt there will be more to play with in the months ahead

Step 1: Nothing’s set in stone
First and foremost, you should note that all the live tiles provided by Microsoft (and by your device manufacturer) can be removed if you wish – there’s absolutely no need for anything you don’t use to be on a Windows Phone homescreen. Even the new tiles which appear automatically (for example, when creating a new email mailbox) can then be removed again if you really don’t want them.

Step 2: Removing a Live Tile
To remove a live tile, just long press on it and it will ‘pop’ to the extreme foreground, with a little ‘unpin’ icon in its corner. Tap this to proceed. Note that the tile itself can be reinstated again later if you change your mind, simply by pinning the appropriate application, mailbox or bookmark back to the homescreen (as you’ll see below).

Step 3: Moving tiles
In addition to removing tiles, you can also move existing ones around. Again, long press on any tile (it doesn’t have to be the one you wanted to move) and it will pop up, while the rest jiggle around in the background. Drag any tile to where you’d like it and you’ll find the other tiles move intelligently to accommodate it. Note that all the tiles stay ‘jiggling’ for you to do multiple tile moves, rather conveniently. And yes, this is all rather reminiscent of a ’tile puzzle’ game, the sort you used to play as a child!

Step 4: What’s next?
When you’re done rearranging, just tap the ‘Back’ icon and the Live Tiles will return to their normal appearance. Drag the homescreen up and down and check your handiwork. What’s missing? You’d like a few of your most used applications represented? No problem.

Step 5: Pinning an application
Swipe to the left, to bring up the usual scrolling list of Windows Phone applications (and hubs). Find the one you want on your homescreen, e.g. Office, and long press on it. Up will pop a one-item menu, ‘pin to start’. Tap this and the item will immediately be placed at the bottom of the homescreen. From where, as above, you can long press again and move it as needed.

Step 6: Pinning a contact
There’s lots more that you can pin to the homescreen. You’ll probably already have seen that any email inboxes will have been automatically added. What about adding some of your favourite contacts (e.g. your partner)? Go to ‘People’ and bring up the person’s details. Notice the pin icon in the bottom options bar  – tap this and your contact will have their own tile on the homescreen. Either with their name or with whatever you set as their photo or thumbnail.

Step 7: Web sites too
Another common thing to pin to the homescreen is a favourite web site. Bring up the page required in Internet Explorer and then tap on the ‘…’ icon, bottom right. On the menu will be ‘pin to start’.

Step 8: Site thumbnail
Tap this menu option and your favourite web site will be depicted as a thumbnail and thereafter only one tap away. Note that you can pin more than one contact or web page, the limits depend entirely on how long you want your scrolling homescreen to be!

Step 9: Map fragments even cooler
Finally, map locations are an interesting addition to the ‘pinning’ system. With a location on screen in Maps, tap to bring up the address details. You’ll see, again, the familiar ‘pin’ icon in the bottom bar. Tap it and the location will be added to the homescreen, for instant recall (and routing to) later on. Rather neatly, the graphic shown on the homescreen is a thumbnail from the map itself.

Step 10: Look and feel
You can change the way your tiles look too, both by setting their ‘accent’ colour (the shade used for tiles which don’t already have explicit colour or graphics) and by altering the background (light or dark, though note that the latter provides power savings, especially if your phone has an OLED screen). Go to ‘Settings’ and then tap on ‘Theme’ and start playing around. It’s surprising how much of a look and feel change you can pull off!

Nokia has lost a lot of market share over the last year, with most of it being picked up by Android. With the launch of the Lumia 800 the Nokia will no doubt be hoping it will regain some of those users who had jumped ship.

But what is the reality of switching from Android to Windows Phone? Read on to find out.

A new home screen
The biggest difference you’ll encounter between Windows Phone and Android is the fundamentally different approaches the two take to the user interface, and in particular the home screen.

Windows Phone eschews the multi-panelled, widget-heavy home screen design favoured by Android, and replaces it with the ‘Metro’ UI. This is typographically rich, and replaces menus, for the most part, with a sideways swiping paradign.

There are no icons on the home screen; there are tiles. Some of these are live and can display basic real time information, in the style of widgets, although they are far more limited in both design and function.

Virtually all the tiles are the same size and colour, which looks nice but actually makes it difficult to locate the apps you want, and having them all placed into a two column, vertically scrolling list doesn’t help you to remember their position either.

Swipe your thumb to the left and you’ll see your full apps list. Ordered alphabetically in a single column it gets a tad unwieldy when you have lots of apps installed. It really feels as though it needs a third screen showing a shorted list of your most used app for easier access.

The Windows Phone UI feels classy and refined, but from an Android power user’s perspective it does feel a bit like ‘smartphone lite’. The reduced number of options are great for ease of use, but not for flexibility: you can set up Android to work like Windows Phone, but not vice versa.

Be prepared for more services
Services are an inherent part of every smartphone platform these days, and Windows Phone is no different. You’ll need to sign up to a Microsoft Live account to use the phone to anything like its potential (this also creates you an Xbox live account if you don’t already have one, and signs you up for a generous 25GB of cloud storage through SkyDrive). Starting the phone for the first time also prompts you to sign up for a Nokia account as well. I’m not sure what I’m missing out on by skipping this.

But it’s not enough to simply sign up for these accounts, Windows Phone wants you to use them too. Your new Live email account is set to sync, whether you intend to use it or not, and your contacts are all synced as well. The default location for saving documents is your SkyDrive.

If you’re totally new to smartphones it’s fantastic. If you’re an Android user happy with your Google services, and using things like Dropbox for your cloud requirements, it’s frustrating having to turn off all the auto syncing that you don’t need.

Moving over your data
I initially imported my contacts from my Android phone using the Contact Transfer feature in Windows Phone. This used a simple Bluetooth connection between the two device and was completely seamless.

The problem is it imported literally everything. Not just the ‘proper’ contacts but those from Twitter and similar services as well. It left me with a contacts database about three times the size it should have been, and by the time I’d set up my social networking accounts there were duplicates everywhere.

The only option was to reset the phone and import my contacts and calendar using directly by syncing with my Google account instead.

Tied to Zune
In the same way that the iPhone is tied to iTunes, Windows Phone is tied to Zune. As an Android user accustomed to a virtually desktop-free existence it feels like a backward step having to connect the phone to the desktop simply to copy a photo off the device. Sending over Bluetooth isn’t an option.

Maybe this is something I’ll get used to, but as a Mac user I’m stuck using the Windows Phone 7 connector which, as I’ve found before, can be notoriously picky about when it wants to work.

Browsing and apps
Given that the browser is one of Android’s highlights it’s not surprise to say that Internet Explorer in Windows Phone is not as good. It’s neither as quick nor does it render pages as accurately, and the market for third party browser is non-existant.

The picture for apps is improving all the time, although you will inevitably find apps you used on Android are not yet available on Windows Phone. Even the YouTube app is, remarkably, just a shortcut to YouTube’s mobile website. The Windows Phone Marketplace is reasonably well furnished, though, so there’s plenty to keep you going. One thing you don’t get is the fifteen minute refund window that you get with the Android Market. Once you buy an app there’s no going (and the apps do generally seem a bit more expensive).

Windows Phone in general use
So what else will you notice when moving from Android to Windows Phone?

Battery life is better, but not by as much as you might think. Windows Phone does multi-tasking of a kind, but not in the Android way where pretty much everything continues running in the background. Social networking is really well integrated into all parts of the OS, including the People and Photos apps, but not to the extent that you won’t still need the dedicated Twitter and Facebook apps as well. The keyboard is fantastic – better than either Android or iOS can offer.

Also, note that while the search button (if there is one) on Android phones searches within the app you’re using, the search button on Windows Phone launches Bing Search every time. There will be a separate on-screen button for searching within apps.

And you will of course encounter some irritations where the phone does things differently to how you are used to. For me it was the poor Bluetooth implementation, the fact that there is no way to remove the music controls from the lockscreen once you’ve opened a music app (without restarting the phone), and that the sound is either all on or all off. There’s no way to have the notifications sound on and the ringtone off at the same time. And the vibration alert on the Lumia 800 feels rather feeble.

There’s no doubt at all that the Nokia Lumia 800 is the best Windows Phone to date. The best design, best build quality, best value added apps (more about these in our full review coming soon). If you want to test out Windows Phone then this is the handset to go for.

Windows Phone is simpler than Android, both in terms of its approach to usability and because it still feels like a work in progress. Windows Phone 7.5 is a major leap forward from 7, but it’s possible that it will take Windows Phone 8 some time next year for the OS to finally compete on equal terms with Android and iOS.

Angry Birds
£2.29
Angry Birds is not an app, but it is so popular that it is considered a necessity to give validity to any mobile platform. It plays very well on Windows Phone.

Perfect Scan
£2.29
Perfect Scan is ideal for those who need to scan and save multiple documents. Not only does it take crystal clear images, but it helps greatly with organising them.

Amazon Kindle
Free
The Amazon Kindle is possibly the best eBook service in the world and on a large screened Windows Phone the reading experience is as good as on any other competing platform.

RemoteSuite: Ultimate
£4.99
This is a slightly specialist app, but one which would prove useful to the majority. It offers access to any PC or Server that you own or manage and works extremely efficiently.

Turn by Turn Navigation
£3.99
This app is one of very few to offer a full turn-by-turn navigation experience and the price would suggest that the features would be lacking. We were surprised, however, at how complete this app is.

eBay
Free
Despite an appearance that verges on ugly, the official eBay app contains all of the functionality you will need when away from home.

Evernote
Free
Evernote jumped on the Windows Phone platform early and has produced a near flawless experience which matches the main service perfectly.

LazyTube
£0.79
LazyTube offers a superior YouTube mobile experience including live tile updates, HD video streaming and so much more.

Blastastic
£0.79
Blastastic streamlines the process of adding photos to multiple social networks. Simply take a photo and upload to all your networks with one click.

Thumba Photo Editor
£0.79
Thumba includes a huge range of transformation features that will help you modify any photo that you have taken on your phone. It represents great value.

If you managed to watch the Nokia keynote a few hours ago, you may have noticed the unveiling of the new Lumia 800 device. Although the Lumia 800 looks near identical to that of its N9 compatriot, there have definitely been some changes on the inside of the device. But which one deserves your hard-earned cash? Is the Lumia 800 worth an upgrade if you own a N9 already?

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The display

One of the more surprising aspects regarding the announcement of the Nokia Lumia 800. The internet has been swamped with rumours speculating that Nokia would be unveiling a 4″ screen, sadly this hasn’t come to fruition. The Lumia 800 sports a 3.7 inch AMOLED display and 800 x 480 resolution, a slightly smaller size than the 3.9 inch screen on the Nokia N9. It does seem a slightly strange m

ove for Nokia to do this, but we will reserve judgement until we get our hands on the device. One reason that Nokia may have made the screen slightly smaller could be to help the Windows Phone OS (Mango 7.5

) run better? Perhaps.

The processor

The Nokia N9 wasn’t sluggish in the slightest, and under its bonnet was a 1GHz Texas Instrument processor which dealt with most tasks easily enough. Although we were impressed with the processor at the time, with dual-core processors becoming more common in phones, 1GHz does seem to pretty dated now. We wasn’t expecting to see a massive improvement to the processor in the Lumia 800, but a tidy 1.4GHz Qualcomm processor has been packed into the device, which should be swift enough to handle what the phone has to offer.

The camera

Not much has changed in this area of the phone, with the the Lumia 800 sporting the same 8-megapixel dual-LED flash camera that appeared on the N9. However, the VGA front facing camera on the N9 doesn’t feature on the new device.

The weight and thickness

The Lumia 800 might seem to be a little flabby to some people, weighing in at 142g, a mere 7g more than the N9. With regards to thickness, both devices are a subtle 12.1mm in size.

The battery life

The one area which has seen a decent improvement is the battery life of the new Lumia 800. The N9 boasted up to 11 hours of talk time, not too shabby when you compare it to other lea

ding phones, but the Lumia 800 has been quoted of being able to handle 13 hours of talk time before you’ll be needing the charger.

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From the specifications and details that have been released, it seems Nokia’s new device will be a small step in the right direction. Although there isn’t any major changes, it will be intriguing to see how the Mango OS looks on the new Lumia 800. Look out for our hands on with the new device soon enough.