Once in a while a phone is made that stands out from the crowd, that is outstanding in its appearance and design. The Nokia 8800 is one such phone. It's not cheap; in fact it's extremely expensive, but that's the point. As the successor to the Nokia 8910i, exclusivity is what the Nokia 8800 is all about.
Physically the Nokia 8800 is unique. The body features a laser-cut stainless steel cover that slides down to reveal the keypad within. The stainless steel covers are highly durable and provide excellent protection for the phone. The screen is made from reinforced scratch-resistant glass, so the Nokia 8800 is engineered to last, which is just as well considering the price! As well as being durable it is superbly crafted and beautiful of course. The phone is quite heavy, due to the metal case, but feels good to hold. The keypad is partially obscured by the casing and isn't as easy to use as more conventional designs, especially the bottom row of keys.
Inside there is further attention to detail, with an exclusive user interface with its own styles and themes. The Nokia 8800 comes with a set of ringtones composed especially for the Nokia 8800 by Ryuichi Sakamoto.
Moving on to the functionality of the device, the Nokia 8800 isn't exactly at the cutting edge, but isn't too far away. The phone features an integrated 0.5 megapixel camera with a good quality video recorder. The TFT display really is impressive, being very sharp and bright. It's rated at 262,000 colours and has a higher resolution than the Samsung D500, making it one of the best in its class. The Nokia 8800 comes with an integrated music player that can play MP3 and AAC formats with stereo output. A standard Nokia stereo headset is provided with the sales package, but the Nokia 8800 is also compatible with Nokia Bluetooth wireless headsets.
Other features include a set of 3D games designed to make use of the Nokia 8800's 3D graphics accelerator, fast data transfer via EDGE, and an XHTML web browser that lets you view web pages as they appear on a computer, albeit on a tiny screen. The Nokia 8800 has an internal memory of 64 Mbytes, but an external memory card would have been nice in a phone with as many media features as this one. Battery life is acceptable but not brilliant.
Overall, the Nokia 8800 is all about creating a big impression. It's a beautiful phone that has style by the bucket load. It's well-featured, but loses out to competitors like the Sony Ericsson K750i in this respect. If you crave features look elsewhere, but if you crave style, the Nokia 8800 is for you!


Features of the Nokia 8800 include: