Nokia 8800

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Performance And Battery Life
Save for a laggy startup time that takes about 5 seconds, once up, Nokia's well-known intuitive user interface doesn't fail here. Aside from some frustrating miscues with the Navi pad, Nokia's Series 40 Version 2 platform is fairly easy to use. Shortcuts can also be assigned to the right soft-key and the keys of the Navi pad.

The 8800 may be the only handset to feature a 0.5-megapixel (SVGA) camera. Note the lack of a photo light.

Camera resolution is decent just so long as you don't expect anything similar to what the 2-megapixel models deliver. Having gotten used to photo lights being part of a camera-phone's arsenal, it comes as some surprise that the 8800 has left this out. So you can forget about night shots unless the area is brightly lit. The camera records in JPEG and video clips in QCIF resolution of 144 x 176 pixels.

FM is a marvel to listen to as the signals come across strongly even within a building. Both MP3 and ACC files are supported for music playback, though only about three to four MP3s at 3,000KB each could be stored when we tried out this function. These were transferred via the Nokia Audio Manager app under the PC Suite.

At v6.5, the PC Suite is the latest version of the bundled software that comes with the phone. Setting up is a breeze and allows you to connect the 8800 to your PC via Bluetooth. There was no data cable bundled. Once connected, you can synchronize your contacts, emails, notes and tasks with a variety of applications including Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes. The Suite is also designed to install applications, transfer music, create wallpapers and ringtones, view multimedia files on the phone, and send text messages.

We had no issues with reception or clarity. In fact, a new feature called Audio Enhancing, under Settings > Calls, works much like Samsung's Sound Mate to improve speech clarity in noisy environments. It seemed effective enough when we tried it out at the malls over a busy weekend.

You get two bundled 600mAh Lithium-ion batteries. To assure authenticity, Nokia has stuck on a hologram label that contains a hidden 20-digit battery code.

Watch out for the battery indicator. On a full charge that took 1.5 hours, the battery indicator still showed full after nearly 5 hours of non-stop radio. But by the following afternoon, the indicator had dipped three bars and, following a couple of calls, SMSes and snaps, was completely drained by night. Nokia claims up to 2 hours 40 mins of talktime and 200 hours (about 8 days) on standby. We say the battery should last two to three days if you plan to use a combination of features, though the smart thing to do would be to pack along that spare.

Nokia has an interactive demo on its site for those too lazy to flip through the manual.

Conclusion
If money is not a problem, the 8800 achieves what it set out to do--offer a luxury handset that doesn't claim to be anything more than a premium-priced, very desirable handset.

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