Nokia Lumia 800 hands on, review and specification view.. with photo and video

Nokia has announced the Nokia Lumia 800, one of two newWindows Phone handsets from the world's biggest phone manufacturer.

The Lumia 800 is the "first real Windows Phone" said Nokia CEO Stephen Elop. We like the sentiment, even if it's a rather sickly soundbite.

The Lumia 800 bears more than a passing resemblance to the Nokia N9 – the non-UK MeeGo-toting handset that never really got a chance.

Still, we praised the N9's rather super unibody design and we're pleased to see it given another whirl.

Here's everything you need to know about Nokia's new hope, which was previously known under the moniker of Sea Ray.

Nokia Lumia 800 UK release date

The Nokia Lumia 800 UK release date is 16 November. The handset is now available for pre-order on www.nokia.com.

And if you're wondering about its cheaper sibling, the Nokia Lumia 710 UK release date is early 2012.

Nokia Lumia 800 UK UK price

Carphone Warehouse has released pricing. The Nokia Lumia 800 UK price is £449.95 SIM-free or is available for free on a £31 per month contract.

Anyone who pre-orders the new phone from Carphone Warehouse will also receive a free £50 gift card to spend in Sainsbury's, Debenhams, Next or Toys R Us.

Phones 4u is offering free accessories worth £49.99 with every preorder of the Lumia 800 on £31 tariffs and above.

Nokia Lumia 800 networks and stores

Vodafone, Three,Carphone Warehouse, Phones 4U and Best Buy are to stock the handset from the 16 November launch.

The smartphone will be available in black on Vodafone from launch, with a cyan version to come "shortly afterwards".

The handset works across WCDMA and GSM/EDGE networks. HSDPA internet speed is 14.4Mbps.

Nokia Lumia 800 processor

The handset features a 1.4 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor with hardware acceleration and a graphics processor. A single core it may be, but the clockspeed is high.

Nokia Lumia 800 screen

The Lumia 800 features a 3.7 inch AMOLED ClearBlack curved display blending into the handset's body.

Nokia Lumia 800 memory

The handset has 16GB of internal user memory and 25GB of free SkyDrive storage. The handset also has 512MB of RAM. Call us pedantic, but no 32GB version seems a little bit of a miss, while 512MB of RAM also sees it lag behind the competition. What's more, there's no microSD slot either.

Nokia Lumia 800 camera

The Nokia Lumia 800 has instant-share capabilities. The 8 megapixel camera is based on Carl Zeiss optics (a Nokia favourite) and has a f2.2 aperture for better low light photography.

The spec sheet cites just "HD video" rather than being more specific - that means it's 720p rather than the 1080p we're used to seeing on a lot of other handsets.

But what's missing here? Yep, that's right - there is no front-facing camera for video calling. Now, that's a big miss compared to the competition.

Nokia Lumia 800 software

The handset features Windows Phone 7.5 Mango with Internet Explorer 9 (supporting HTML5) and Office integration. There's also Nokia Drive, a full turn-by turn sat nav (a first for Windows Phone) as well as Nokia Maps.

However, as our colleagues at Gizmodo UK point out, Nokia Drive "won't ship with live traffic; offline map caching nor previous locations. Gulp." That's bad news, especially as the great thing about turn-by-turn apps such as TomTom on iPhone is that they have all the map data offline, so you're not reliant on cellular data.

Combined conversations mean Facebook, Twitter, chat and SMS messages in a single thread.

Nokia Music and Mix Radio mean14 million tracks and 100radio channels are accessible from the device.

Windows Phone is a significant departure for Nokia.

As TechRadar's Patrick Goss says, Nokia and Microsoft are "two companies desperate to see a high-profile partnership bear fruit."

"Nokia's decision to go with Windows Phone 7 is hugely significant, and the Finnish company has significant goodwill from a user base that has grown familiar with its handsets in the past."

Nokia Lumia 800 connectivity and sensors

There's 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1, A-GPS, micro-USB connector, 3.5mm headphone jack plus an accelerometer, proximity sensor and digital compass.

Nokia Lumia 800 weight, dimensions and packaging

The handset weighs 142g, just heavier than the 140g iPhone 4S. Unlike other handsets, while the dimensions are 116.5 mm x 61.2 mm x 12.1 m. The sales package for the phone is a lot more generous than other manufacturers' - you get a soft cover, fast USB charger, stereo headset, charging and data cable and a user guide.Nokia Lumia 800 colours

Nokia Lumia 800 battery life

The 1450mAh battery supports a talk time of up to 13 hours, standby of 265 hours and up to 55 hours of music playback.

Nokia Lumia 800 colours

The handset is available in "vivid colours" namely cyan, magenta and black. Since when has black been a vivid colour?

Nokia has unveiled its badly-kept secret at Nokia World 2011, with the Lumia 800 finally getting an official outing.

We were big fans of the Nokia N9when it was shown off a few months ago, but after it was sadly canned for UK shores we thought we'd never see the design again.

But it turns out the N9 was shunted to make way for the Lumia 800, which is basically the same handset, but rebooted to run Windows Phone 7.5.

First impressions of the phone are mixed. If you're used to handling the current crop of super slim handsets doing the rounds in today's phone shops, you can't help but feel the Lumia 800 is a little on the chunky side.

However, that's not to say it isn't an attractive device, with its large 3.7-inch OLED screen pushed to the sides of the chassis, and a cool curved polycarbonate shell gives the phone a very premium feel indeed.