pictures hub on Windows Phone is the most beautiful picture gallery, I have ever seen till date:
I am again taking the risk of being called as just another blogger going Ga Ga over Windows Phones, but one has to admit that while Windows Phone manages to make even dumb and dead Text feel alive, it doesn’t actually hate pictures at all, but kind of love them more passionately.
Opening the picture hub, takes you to the screen with Pictures written in bold on the top and four headings underneath.
camera roll, albums, date and people (did you noticed that all headings are non-caps)
Camera roll obviously denotes the pictures taken from the camera only. You find all your pictures stocked here in a fashion of four snaps per row and screen real estate allows 5×4 snaps at a time to be visible on screen that way. If you notice then you will find that camera roll is kept separate from rest of the tabs like albums, date, people and favourites. May be it has been setup so because you may access camera roll portion of your gallery directly from Camera UI itself.
albums brings all your albums from your phone folders or from all your linked accounts like Facebook\Skydrive at one place. It stocks the albums in a fashion of two albums in each row and allows almost 3×2 albums to stay in the provided screen real estate. Same goes with people tab that may be accessed by swiping sideways from here and shows off the albums from social profiles of your friends. Swiping sideways allows you to go through Windows Phone panoramic view which allow you to navigate into subgroups like people (photos from social profiles of your friends), albums, date and favourites.
Back in pictures hub, its also divided in swipable sections like people hub. After the first section containing the mentioned sub-heading, rest two sections are favourites and what’s new section like people hub, which shows of recently uploaded pictures from social profiles of your friends be it Twitter,Facebook, LinkedIn or Windows Live.
Thumbnail generation seems perfect and zooming in been way faster than my Nokia N8 or Samsung Galaxy S at least, which feels almost instant rather than waiting for one second or more to let the image come clear in full screen. In case of online images, it creates the thumbnails first (feels very optimized and faster even on EDGE connections), then download and cache the image only if one viewed the same specifically.
Like I said in other part, I couldn’t manage to get the info that for how long it caches an image, but with a 3G or strong wifi connection it always seems to be instant job and I always wondered if some kind of magic happening behind.
While viewing a picture, the options available in more (…) menu are the followings:
share…
share on twitter/facebook/skydrive (whichever you chosen in pictures+camera settings)
use as wallpaper
delete
add to favourites
auto-fix
As you can see, it lacks two very important options that are edit and details.
Absence of details shows that Microsoft allowing very less access to the image metadata and a common user can’t even check if wants to know that on which date the picture was taken or where the picture was taken or what the size of an individual image is (though date subgroups gives you an idea of the month taken at least).
Absence of adequate photo\video editor on board could be termed as one of the weakness of Windows Phones as of now. Though there are some nice paid alternatives like Photo Editor from AM or Pictures Lab already available, but having one on board natively is something very different from buying or downloading an app.
Even if editor is absent from Windows Phone as of now, you find an interesting option built-in here that is named as auto-fix. Works great for the n00bs, who just want to fix the brightness and color issues mainly.
As about the sharing option, then while Skydrive or Facebook uploads works perfectly, sad to see that choice of twitter picture upload actually generates a public Skydrive link to that picture and upload the picture to Skydrive only. Sad because as of now, none of the Twitter client support preview from Skydrive except those on Windows Phone itself. Would have been better if Windows Phone was using Twitter image upload APIs.
One interesting option that is available with online picture is the option to save them to phone. You can save any twitter\Faceboo photos to your phone just by going into more (…) button.
Nitish Kumar's Blog 
Holy shit! 24 pages? :-O Sorry man, I give it a pass.. I am too busy, like you 😦
Nice post. How about an option to display the post in one page? May make it simpler to read
You are just awesome dude… how the hell can u review soooooo much!! hats offff! even i own nokia lumia 800!! feels like reading n reading… (now in page 1)
Will consider to put a PDF file for whole post.
One hell of a review Nitish.
Thanks mate. Went out a little early than scheduled but hope I covered most of things
Looks like you can now publish a book on Lumia Review 🙂 Great Review..
Nice review , by the way about OTA , it’s a wp7 limitation and not lumia , soon wp in market currently supports OTA same is true about other few features.
Yup! The review is mostly about Windows Phone as a whole rather than Lumia only
Good post , though I must say I couldn’t read it in one go 🙂
Even though I havent used or tried any WP device for more than half an hour, I just hated UI and how it looks. I don’t think that perception of ugly,over simplified UI will change.
As expected and read all over for me 3 things stand out for WP. These can make it success.
1) People Hub
2) Brilliant Office Suite ( and its FREE)
3) Email
But sadly I feel Nokia is going away from their soul and going Apple way.
This may be good for company(I really doubt) but not good for industry as whole.
Suyog,
I had similar sentiments about WP UI before trying it myself. Even I mentioned once that I felt those uneven fonts as ugly. But trust me, views are bound to change once you allow it grow over you. Not all the praises going around are dummy.
Agree with Nitish, once I got my hands on Lumia 800, I didn’t like UI for few hours or a day and missed home screens. But later, started loving the UI and now I am a fan of UI. 🙂
People hub is exceptional as just like Meego it brings all social activities at one place and like WebOS it brings all the photos (even twitter ones).
So in all, people hub will effectively help people managing their social needs without going behind any apps that is a great thing for n00bs or even people coming from Symbian/Meego.
Second great thing is speed of UI that literally no offers either be Symbian or Android
Suyog, I’ll agree with Nitish.. in just two words…. you will see my views about it changing too… it’s actually a good UI. there are however some features that really were needed but if talking about UI, seriously I think if I was given more time with it I would been liking this UI. and I’ll not say like many out there that “Windows Phone 7.5” is not that good to be used.
But still I’ll say that MeeGo on N9 (for its given time) has been the most *Mature* smartphone OS (in most of the aspects) among all of them.
And Nitish; that really is great post above, I’ll try to read it completely 😛
Review is great for people want to know about the History, comparison , apps functionality , dimensions but drawback is too massive detail..
Very interesting article, Nitish. I’m very exited with Windows phone on Nokia, but lack of BT and file transfer worries me. Nokia has been great among other things because of its flexibility and versatility. Does is support USB on the go, like my N8? What about something small but GREAT in functionality, notification light? Man, I think Nokia should never get rid of this. It helps the user so much to see through a notification light, that you have a missed event.
Quite a thorough article on the Lumia 800(& upcoming 900)windows phone. The most important things for me are:i’m not going to sell a Rolls Royce to ride a better handlind motorcycle-ie,my Nokia E7-00 vs any Lumia! No storage! No tethering! No bluetooth! No sale!
One of the most comprehensive review of Lumia 800 I have read. sheer Brilliant.
Are u still using this device? How is the battery life holding up for you?
Any word on Lumia 900 launch date in india?
Thanks,
-Pankaj
The best review of WP that I have seen , kudos to u Mr. Kumar ! U r right , the Lumia 800 is beautiful ; it should be since it`s a copy of the N9 ! But that same design is also a problem in certain areas of the world ( more about this in a bit . ) .
i`ve always said that WP has potential but it`s still immature ( Takes 3 years to work out enough of the bus and work enough features in , to make the OS useful . ) , seriously late to the party and there r too many other OEMs trying to get a piece of the pie . In all fairness to Nokia , they haven`t had a chance to make an impact on WP yet , maybe WP8 will change this . Nor have the Lumias been out too long , though this is changing . So it`s still a bit early to say for sure .
That said , WP hasn`t exactly taken off yet , marketshare is still single digits . Nor do I like the Metro UI , though my issue with it is more function than form ( but I do think it`s ugly !) . I firmly believe that a homescreen should convey enough info to keep u current at a glance , and the Metro UI doesn`t do this . Even Windows Mobile could do this !
WP`s biggest problem , IMHO , is it`s requirements for a constant connection and Skydrive . Not so much a problem in developed countries , but in emerging markets with their infrastructure issues and the need to watch data usage, it`s a different thing entirely . I don`t think WP will do well in emerging markets ( It seems to not be … ) , though it also doesn`t seem to be doing well in many developed countries either , with the USA , Finland and Russia as notable exceptions .
Nor will do well in countries where the N9 was a success, most notably China , due to the problem that WP is functionally inferior to Meego , and Symbian , for that matter . even the new 311 is better from what I can tell !
For these reasons , I don`t see WP as more than moderately successful , assuming it takes off , of course ! Maybe WP8 will change this , ir really needs too ! cheers !
Mofo awesome! Never believed there existed a greater Lumia 800 fan than me! :p
Hmmm , no replies , can`t say I`m surprised lol !
On second thought , looks like the 10/19/2012 post MIGHT have a reply so I take back the previous remark , t least to an extent lol…
Every thing about Windows Phone OS is covered very well.