Nokia 8800 Sirocco review: Luxury redefined

Limited MP3 usage

The menu includes a general media player as well an application called Music player. The Music player manages MP3 and AAC formats. An option for creating one’s own playlists as well as a simple equalizer with Rock, Pop and two user-configurable presets are available too.

Music player

The player features Repeat and Shuffle as well as Select All options (marks all music files in the phone). In the last case the phone searches in the folder “Music files”, so you would better store all your MP3 files here.

Player settings • playing options

Sound is classy. Yet, it does not achieve the performance of standard MP3 players or music phones like Sony Ericsson’s Walkman lineup, for example. The possibility to simultaneously listen to music and browse the phone menu is present. Music files are played in the order stated in the currently active playlist. On stand-by the phone displays file names and the date in regular intervals.

Setting the equalizer

As we mentioned earlier, it is a great pity that Nokia 8800 Sirocco only has a minijack as this excludes the plug-in of standard earphones. Enclosed handsfree sets are good for calls, but not for high-class music performance. Nokia managers probably expect future solvent Sirocco owners to be selective enough to not do with a phone MP3 player, but prefer to get themselves a classical MP3 player instead. On the other hand, Sony Ericsson Walkman models are a perfect example that the player-in-a-phone solution is simply great. Considering the lack of a memory card slot in Nokia 8800 Sirocco, however, any full-function music player built in it would have been in vain.

The phone also has a radio identical to the radios used in all other model from the Series 40. There are 20 positions for stations; automatic search is reliable. Unfortunatelly, there is no RDS support.

The calendar – the mother of wisdom

The calendar can store 5 event types: meeting, call, birthday, note, and reminder. Notes can be up to 160-character long. You can set the calendar to automatically delete events in predetermined time intervals. Each event can also be repeated. Event records can be visualized in a month, week, or day view. The first weekday is user-configurable.

 
Month • week view at the calendar

 
Selecting a new event • entering details

The organizer offers a task manager too. Tasks can be marked as given low, normal, or high priority. Marking-off after accomplishing is available as well. Notes can contain up to 3000 characters, but it is hard to believe anyone will ever make use of so much space.

Task manager

The alarm clock will wake you up even if the phone is off. Alerts are repeated; snooze intervals are user-configurable. Alarm can be represented by a standard ringing, radio broadcast, or a MP3 file. In the menu you will also find a common stopwatch, a countdown, and a calculator, a unit converter and world time clock.

 
Calculator • stopwatch

Unit converter • world time

At the end, let’s also mention the voice recorder used for recording of ongoing calls. Its time limit is 60 minutes – absolutely sufficient.

Voice recorder

The WAP browser opens simple web pages too. The phone can serve as a modem for internet connection (only via Bluetooth though). Data flows are not the best the Finns could have offered: Nokia 8800 Sirocco support EDGE and GPRS technologies, but both are Class 8. Why Nokia did not equip this new bijou with Class 10 remains a mystery. Synchronization with PC is backed up by PC Suite.

Mission accomplished

Nokia has once again managed to design a mobile phone that meets the wishes of precisely those clients it has been made for. Any data features, organizing functions or calling options should be taken as nothing more but a good base for work and calls. The crucial priority of this model is to thrill you and grab others attention at first sight, including due to its price tag. The materials are outstanding, the construction is brilliant; applications and all features are the result of a careful selection.

I suppose that as the time passes by, Nokia 8800 Sirocco’s owners will start to feel the impact of drawback, like the lack of memory cards, the constant necessity of cleaning the panels and the display glass, or the lack of a system connector.