Nokia 8800 / 8801 review

As I mentioned before, Nokia 8800 is the first phone that I know of that uses SVGA camera. Most devices today are either VGA (low level models), 1 – 1.3 mega pixels (mid-range and some higher end models) and the latest are 2 and 3 mega pixel one. Currently, our Specs database has 25 models with camera of 2 mega pixels and above, 104 models with 1 mega pixel and above, and 205 models with only 0.3 mega pixels (VGA). Out of all those phones, our database has only Nokia 8800 with SVGA or 0.5 mega pixel camera. Even though pictures taken with the 0.5 camera of 8800 look definitely better then the 0.3 mpixel ones, there are still no match to the 1 mega pixel pictures taken with Nokia 7610. Pretty much I think it is just hypocritical to try to market and sell a “Premium” device for $700-$900 and just include 0.5 mega pixel camera.

Nokia 8800 Sample pictures:

The camera setting allow for 800x600 picture or 120 x 144 in portrait mode. There are three levels of compress/quality – high, medium or basic. The same picture in high quality takes 78kb, 48kb when snapped in medium and only 34kb in basic.

Nokia 8800 Sample pictures in 3 levels of quality:

High

Medium

Basic

For comparison purposed I have taken the same shots with 4 different cameras: Nokia 7610 (1 mega pixel), Nokia 8800 (0.5 mega pixels), HP 6315 (0.3 mega pixels) and Canon A75, 3 mega pixel camera shooting in 0.3 mega pixel mode.

Nokia 8800	HP 6315	Nokia 7610	Canon A75

As seen from the sample photos, the 8800 actually performs very well for a SVGA camera. The colors are overall decently represented, with better focus then the ones from Nokia 7610. The night mode of the 8800 creates less noise also compared with 7610.

Sample pictures with Night Mode turned on:

Nokia 8800

Nokia 7610

With the media player you can view and play images, audio, video and animated images. Compatible streaming videos from a network server can also be viewed. The application is very simple and straight-forward – select a file and listed to in via the speakerphone or headsets or view it. If you want play lists or equalizers, go to the next application in the media menu – the Music player. In order to use it, you will have to download a music file using the Nokia PC Suite application. Given the good speakerphone quality, the sound reproduction is just excellent given that this is just a small cell phone. The sound can be routed also to your Bluetooth headset. What I liked a lot is that you can exit the Music player menu, and the music will still play in the background. If you go to the stand-by screen, the name of the sound will be shown. In addition, music player sports several pre-defined equalizer settings such as Pop, Rock and Jazz, plus two customizable ones.

Since the phone lacks memory expansion slot, the number of songs is limited to the available memory, which is about 42 Mb. If the average song is about 4MB, you can store about 10 songs total – quite not enough for useful MP3 player use.

The sound recorder feature has been upgraded and now supports up to 1 hour audio recording. A one minute sound clip recorded in AMR format takes about 100 kb.

If you have a headset plugged in (which acts as an antenna), you can enjoy listening to the radio also. Up to 20 stations can be programmed.