Nokia 8800 / 8801 review

Phonebook

The internal phonebook can store up to 1,000 contacts. The actual number of contacts actually depends on the how many contact entries you have. You can store multiple numbers for each contact – such as General, Mobile, Home, Office, Fax, or E-mail address, WEB page, postal address, User ID, Note, or Image. The latter is used as Picture ID – shown when that contact calls you. What I did not like is that if you enter a new contact, you can only enter their name and one number. If you want to add like e-mail or second number, you have to search for the contact and edit it. I found this to be inconvenient. The first number that you save for a contact also becomes the default number. The phone supports Presence service – or pretty much notification when you or the other party are busy, away, available etc. Presence is a Network service, meaning your Carrier must support it in order for it to work.
There two ways to speed up the dialing process – Voice tags and Speed dial. Voice tags (calling) alloys you to record a short voice tag, and when you want to call that contact, simply press and hold for 2 seconds the Name soft-key, then say the tag and if a match is found, that contact will be called. Up to 10 voice calls are supported.
To use Speed Dial, you first assign a key to that contact. The key is between 2 and 9. Then to call that number, simple press that key and hold it for 2 seconds.

Up to 25 Caller Groups are also supported. The phone does not come with any pre-defined ones, so you will have to create them and assign contact to them. For those not familiar with caller groups, a good example is your friends and let say your parents. All your friends could be added to a group called Friends and special ring assigned to it. Then, if anyone from your friends tries to call you, you will instantaneously know that someone from your friends is trying to reach you.

I have always praised Nokia for their excellent PhoneBook feature set. The 8800 is not an exception. 1,000 contacts with multiple numbers per name, voice dialing, picture id, and groups are all excellent features all very well designed and organized.

Recent Calls (Call register)

The recent calls are divided into there options – Missed calls, Received Calls and Dialed. When viewing any of those lists, you also see the date and the time of the call. Selecting a number from any of the lists allows you to add it to your contacts, calls it back, send a text message to it, or delete it. When the phone is in stand-by mode, you can press the talk key to invoice the Dialed numbers menu. Unfortunately, you still not change from Dialed to Missed or Received calls, like you can on a Series 60 device.