With the Nokia Lumia 800 now officially on sale across the country, we’ve been taking another look at what the national press has been saying about this stunning new Windows Phone. With positive reviews coming from all corners, it’s clear that the Lumia 800 can be counted on the long list of Nokia’s most critically acclaimed smartphones to date.

Nokia Lumia 800: What the papers say!

First up, Expert Reviews’ David Ludlow was immediately impressed with the gorgeous design quality of the Lumia 800, noting, “It looks fantastic…thanks to what Nokia calls the 'single piece injection moulded polycarbonate shell’. It's this that gives the phone its sleek and sculptured look.”

Ludlow also liked the Lumia 800’s bright and vibrant 3.7-inch screen, saying, “Powering up the phone shows the high quality of the AMOLED screen. It's bright with excellent contrast ratios. With its dark blacks it really brings out the best in Windows Phone 7's tiled user interface.”

Performance also impressed, with Ludlow commenting, “The UI runs incredibly smoothly, with slick transitions…we didn't notice any slowdown when running multiple applications and Internet Explorer rendered websites quickly” and “In terms of slickness, then, [the Lumia 800] is up there with the best of them and [is] noticeably smoother than Android devices.”

“With the Lumia 800 Nokia has created a handset that's beautifully made and desirable” Ludlow continued, while he finished up his glowing review with “Windows Phone 7 is a decent alternative [to Android and iOS] and the Lumia 800 [is] the best handset so far.”

The team at Stuff were just as won over by the Nokia Lumia 800, kicking off their hands-on review with, “Not since the iPhone 4 have we been so impressed with a mobile device’s build quality, and try as we might, we couldn’t coax a single creak or flex out of the single-piece polycarbonate body.”

Again performance impressed, with Stuff noting, “Windows Phone Mango flies along without a single judder, with nippy transitions and smooth running apps” and they also liked the Lumia’s gorgeous screen, as they said, “[The] screen provides deep blacks and bright vibrant colours [and] shows off the richly colourful tiles of Windows Phone Mango to great effect.”

And finally, the Stuff team noted the great quality of the Lumia 800’s 8-Megapixel camera, stating, “A single press of the dedicated shutter button opens up the camera app…and picture quality through the Carl Zeiss optics is expectedly impressive. Camera kit has long been one of Nokia’s strengths, so it’s good to see the Lumia 800 carrying the torch.”

The Verge was next to test out the Lumia 800 and Vlad Savov started off on an incredibly positive note, saying, “My lasting impression of the…case was that it was…so tantalizingly close to perfection as to make you wonder where future upgrades could possibly come from” when assessing the Lumia 800’s gorgeous design, and, “the Lumia 800 is exactly the sort of delight for the senses that you will have expected....”

As with most reviewers, Savov also loved the Lumia’s stunning screen, saying, “Most of the time, you'll struggle to distinguish where the display panel ends, creating the wonderful illusion that onscreen imagery is simply suspended atop the surface of the phone — it's a very organic appearance that lends Microsoft's Metro tiles an extra air of sophistication.”

And when it comes to the unbeatable marriage between Nokia hardware and Microsoft software that the Lumia 800 provides, Savov was as impressed as most reviewers have been, stating, “Windows Phone provides a modern and attractive user interface and the Lumia 800's hardware maintains Nokia's reputation for attention to detail and insistence on high build quality.”

And finally, the experts over at PC Pro were no less admiring of the Lumia 800’s eye-catching and high-quality design, with reviewer Jonathan Bray saying, “The Lumia is a real beauty…” and “Nokia has achieved a very high quality of finish.”

And it wasn’t just the look of the Lumia 800 that Bray was pleased by; he also liked how tough the polycarbonate plastic chassis feels, noting, “And anyone resistant to the idea of sheathing their pride and joy in a cheap protective case will rejoice at the scuff-resistance of the Lumia’s body [and with] Gorilla Glass on the front it should still look smart at the end of your contract, even without the kid-glove treatment.”

And when it comes to the Lumia 800’s camera, great software interface and overall feeling of quality, Bray was quick to praise the new Nokia Windows Phone, saying, “It’s a beautiful thing to behold, has a great camera for stills, and the preinstalled software is extremely slick, with worthy additions from Nokia.”

With so much praise coming from the national papers and the technology press, the Nokia Lumia 800 is already a huge critical success. All that’s left is to see how the buying public responds, so with handsets now on sale across the country and Nokia hailing the Lumia 800 as a hit, why not let us know what you think of this great new Windows Phone?