Nokia 8800 Review

The Nokia 8800 is all about impression. First impressions count for a lot and the 8800 certainly hits the spot !

From the packaging you know that the 8800 has been well thought out. A chrome strip bearing the identity of what lies within holds the box closed. Inside there's a booklet describing how the 8800 came to be and how lucky you are to own one....(sick-bag please...).

To be honest, our initial impressions of the 8800 were of slight disappointment. Why ?

Well, the original 'premium phone' was the 8850/8890 - this was one cool phone in it's day; this was followed a couple of years later by the 8910/8910i, equally impressive. But the 8800 although looking the part, didn't seem to quite hit the mark with any of us. Were we expecting too much ?

The first item on the agenda was the price. Expensive it certainly is.
Far more expensive than it's predecessors ever were. It's actually about £100 to £150 more...So really we should've expected to be 'blown away' by the 8800.....H'mm ?

One thing that struck us when we'd put the phone together was the weight. The 8800 is quite a weighty beast at 134g and it showed. Although it felt solid, it's hard to determine in your mind where the boundary is between good quality and overweight. It's a bit like, 'over-engineered' for want of a better word. It'll last forever but you'll wear trouser pockets out like there's no tomorrow in the meantime.

We're not questioning the look or the feel of the phone, as it really does look beautiful, sleek and downright sexy. You know that by owning it alone, you'll get admiring looks and conversations about it. It could actually be quite good as a 'babe-magnet' or vice versa...!!

The opening mechanism is smoother than any previous models. It simply glides upwards to reveal a decent sized although slightly fiddley keypad. We all preferred the old chrome keys on the 8850 as they looked much better, but they too were awkward to use - So no real advances there then.

The 8800 did impress us however with the display. As we are all probably aware by now the 8800 has a scratch resistant display. Obviously we haven't checked this feature out, as although we are all a bit mad in the office, we're not that mad ! We can say though that the clarity of the screen is exceptional..Well done Nokia !

Feature-wise the Nokia 8800 is good but not fantastic. The biggest let-down being the 0.5 megapixel camera. Why ? What's the point ?? On a handset this expensive, the least you'd expect would be a 1.3MP. Our second biggest gripe is the memory. 64Mb might have been wowing us a year ago, but not now AND it's not expandable...GRRR !

These 2 blinding omissions alone tell us a whole new story, which we'll get to in 'Our Verdict'. Or, in the meantime to coin a time honoured phrase from a bearded bloke from Australia :- "Can you guess what it is yet ?".

Two batteries are included in the box with the 8800. Now anyone's first reaction would be "Great, 2 batteries" followed a few seconds later by "why ?". Nokia claim a talktime of 1.5 to 3 Hrs and a standby of 8 days. We found it to be more akin to 1 to 2 Hrs talktime and 4 days standby. Pretty poor, hence the reason for 2 batteries...

One thing that Nokia have done with the 8800 is to provide a decent amount of goodies in the box. You get a decent carry pouch, a funky desk stand and a cool headset unique to the 8800. Not bad, but they were beaten to this approach by Motorola a year ago when they launched the V3.

This snippet is taken directly from the Nokia website - "Ringing tones composed by award winning composer Ryuichi" - We say - "Never heard of him & after listening to the ringtones, our advice is to download your own".

Bluetooth, 3-D image engine, video record/stream, FM radio and EDGE make up the rest of the main 8800 phone features.