Picked up a Lumia 800 today: First impressions...

Rocking.

I have to say I’m delighted for Nokia. This Lumia is rather sweet.

First off, it feels great in the hand. I feel valued. I feel worth *something* with the Lumia. I think it’s the sleek design, the engineered ‘unibody’ and the brilliant screen combining into a rather swish package.

Exchange (or Outlook/Office365) support is ridiculously seamless. Google, Twitter — everything simply works. But you know this. Windows Phone Mango is nothing new per se.

So what’s really new? Well, I felt strangely (but positively) empowered by seeing Nokia Drive right there ready to take me anywhere. And Nokia Music was very nice: I went straight into the mix tape option demonstrated in the keynote and started listening to some Trance. Perfect.

I was Facebooking in seconds. I do like the integrated People/Pictures connectivity into your social networks. I dashed off a few comments in a few seconds from the People app.

One immediate problem: I couldn’t find the ‘send a tweet’ or ‘send a Facebook status update’ option. Perhaps I just wasn’t looking hard enough. It must be there surely?

Interestingly I’ve veered off discussing Windows Phone and not the Nokia contributions. That distinction is probably going to be lost on many, anyway.

The best thing about the Lumia for me is the camera. Finally a decent Windows Phone with a camera worth more than a cursory glance. It’s not quite Nokia N8 level but it is significant to make me *feel* so much better about the Windows Phone platform. Previously I’ve had to restrict my photo taking activities to bright summer days with other WP7 devices — so that my pictures don’t turn out fuzzy.

There is a distinct danger that as a geek I could find myself seriously annoyed by the WP7 user experience and interface layer. Right now after a good few hours I have to report that I’m still enjoying using the phone. I’m finding the metro UI nice and snappy on the Lumia.

As for battery — that’s going to be a real test. I hope we see some good quality real world results. More on that soon.

The apps are certainly getting there too. I got hold of the British Airways app immediately. Then Seesmic (to try out Salesforce Chatter), then Amazon’s Kindle (nice!) and I even bought an app this evening — the train times app is called Rail Planner. I’m delighted so far.

I will be swapping my main number to the Lumia so I can give it a go under some live conditions.

I will keep you updated!