Nokia 8800 review: Exclusivity costs

Exclusive ringtones

The phone has memory for 1000 contacts. You can use the entries stored in the SIM card memory and on the phone's memory at the same time. You may add five types of phone numbers to every contact - the first one may be set like default, additionally you may change the indication of the primary number. After this come the email and web addresses, mailing address, user's ID, picture and notice.

Look at the contact • items, which can be added to contacts

You can't set ringtones to individual contacts, they can be assigned to groups only. The phonebook may be displayed like a classic name list, name list with numbers or like names with associated photographs. You may set even hundred photos to the contacts.

Display the phonebook option • the list of groups

There's an option to create up to 25 contact groups. Every name could be in more than one group and to every group you may set ringtone and picture. The photos, however, won't have priority to those which you have already assigned to individual names.

Ryuichi Sakamoto has composed the ringtones for the new Nokia. I must confess that I don't have any idea who is he. Definitely it doesn't sound to me very exclusive, as well as the melodies themselves. The oriental sound will suit some people for sure, the cymbals however don't correspond much with most of the world and what's more - the speaker can't reproduct some sounds correct. Anyway, the objective is achieved - you'll be different.

The titles of some ringtones talk about themselves

Writing messages

There are changes in the predictive T9 dictionary compared to 6230i. I have to say that there's no problem anymore with the writing of basic words, such as "Nokia", "yes", "go". You may enter about 150 messages in the shared phone memory. The phone works well with SMS and MMS, email and Instant Messaging. Text messages may be six parts long, the countdown begins from the first sign. MMS messages can't exceed the size of 300 KB.

SMS creation

The email client works with POP3, SMTP and IMAP4 protocols, but it has just basic functionality. You can't attach full resolution photos, the phone cuts them automatically to 195 × 156 pixels. This is unusable. The emails are downloaded completely, not only the headers.

You can also adjust specific tones to the messages, which you won't find in other phones. These settings are part of the profile. What is new and interesting - the profiles transfer option according to the attached accessories. In practice this is functioning in such a way: you put 8800 in the table charger, it switches to the adequate profile.

The hidden half megapixel

The fixed camera of Nokia 8800 is on the sliding part, so when you have the phone closed, the optics is protected. For such an expensive phone the 640 × 480 pixel resolution may be low, while megapixel cameras demand a lot of space. So the result is a compromise and a resolution of 800 × 600 pixels.

Camera at the back side

The photo settings are few - no color balance, forget about exposure compensation. There is 4x digital zoom in two steps and you can choose from the four types of resolution and three types of picture quality. The pictures are stored in JPEG format. At disposal there is a night mode too.

The photos are of a medium quality. The text shots don't come well, the tree leaf also. The color is relatively good; the big problems come with the unclouded sky and the harsh sun. This you can see best on the photos of standing automobiles.

Nokia 8800 sample photos

You can make video clips in 3GP format with 176 × 144 pixel resolution. The video duration seems to be limited only by the space in the phone memory - at the beginning I've been proposed more than an hour record.