Nokia 8800 / 8801 review

Organizer

The 8800 supports the standard set of Organizer applications such as alarm, calendar, wallet, TO-DO list, calculator etc.

I have always disliked how over simplified was the alarm application on all Nokia phones. The newer models now at least feature recurrent rules, but you are still limited to only one alarm. In case you want to schedule an alarm for 8am and 12pm, you will have to actually edit the 8am one. The snooze time-out can be changed from 1 to 60 minutes.

The calendar feature supports up to 5 different note types – meeting, call, birthday, memo or reminder. For every entry an alarm can be set. The calendar allows monthly or weekly views. Expired notes can be deleted automatically (after 1 day, 1 week or 1 month).

To-do list allows you to add short tasks that you have to complete and assign them priority and due date, plus setup an alarm when the due date comes.

Notes allow you to store entries up to 3000 characters long. If you want to store sensitive information, such as credit card numbers or access codes, you can do this with the Wallet application. The first time you access the wallet, you define the wallet code that protects your encrypted data. Then you can add encrypted data in the following categories: Cards, Tickets, Receipts and Personal notes.

Calculator, Stop-watch and countdown timer are also available.

Application

The 8800 comes with three pre-installed J2ME (JAVA) games – Chess, Street Race and Golf Tour, plus three programs – Translator, World Clock and Converter II.
The Chess allows you to play with another player via SMS or Bluetooth, or against the computer. Street Race is 3D racing game, which overall is boring and repetitive. The Gold Tour is also 3D but since I am not a golf fan, I can not comment on its entertaining value.

The Translator application is supposed to translate a word to French, German, Spanish and Italian. Unfortunately, the dictionary databases are very limited and only the most commonly used words are found. The Translator can not translate a whole sentence – you will have to search the words one by one.