Lumia 800 a new dawn

The last time a phone manufacturer pinned its hopes on a single model was when Apple launched the iPhone.

Nokia may still be the largest manufacturer of cellphones in the world, but it is a fallen giant that has seen its smartphone market share plummet. It was down by 31% in the fourth quarter from the previous three months.

But Nokia is radically reinventing itself under CEO Stephen Elop. Elop, a former Microsoft executive, was hired by Nokia in September 2010 to save the ailing company.

Just short of the first anniversary of his now famous memo that used an offshore oil metaphor to describe Nokia as a "burning platform", its new flagship phone was launched in South Africa last week. The Lumia 800 is beautifully designed and elegantly built.

Nokia has always had solid engineering skills, and the 800 borrows from the fine work done on the N9, the last device to run its defunct Symbian operating system. The Lumia, which derives its name from the Latin for light, was positioned as a "new dawn" by Elop when he announced it late last year at Nokia World, London.

Now, after the Christmas rush in Europe, where early reports said 1.3 million units were sold, it is being launched in other territories. The standout feature is the Windows Phone 7.5 operating system it runs.

Made by Microsoft, once Nokia's arch-enemy, it represents a coalition of the wounded, as the two behemoths of a previous era try to reinvent themselves.

Both Nokia and Microsoft are betting the farm on the Lumia 800.

Nokia's recent earnings revealed that it lost $1.25-billion in the fourth quarter, but was also paid $250-million by Microsoft for what is being euphemistically called marketing support.

Mango, as this iteration of Windows Phone 7.5 is nicknamed, is a fine operating system.

I've only had the phone for a day, so the jury is still out, but I've been impressed with the system previously. Google's Android is a clone of Apple's iOS, but Mango is a fresh departure.

It uses a new way of dealing with your data, grouping the contacts and messages in so-called hubs, which are called Live Tiles.

Instead of a static icon of the app, it pulls images of the people updating their Facebook statuses or tweeting.

The side-swiping to move backwards or forwards is intuitive and easy.

Arguably the best service to be included, apart from the new Nokia Drive and its turn-by-turn driving instructions, is Mix Radio.

It's a selection of millions of songs that you can stream (it is about 100MB for an hour) but you can also save onto the phone.

It's the first streaming music service that's come to South Africa and offers a number of "mixes" or lets you make your own.