Nokia 8800: Lavishly impractical?
August 23, 2005 by Jayvee Fernandez
Filed under Phones, Phones, Phones
I’ve had the chance to play around with the Nokia 8800 for a few hours. This is my take on such a lavishly expensive phone:
I can imagine the concept paper for this phone sitting on the tables of a typical Monday board meeting. “All we need to do is find one bloke who can buy one unit and we’ve covered the total production cost of the whole line.” The phone is horrendously expensive, pegged at an average world price of over US$1,000.00. Egad, it’s more expensive than my iBook.
But it really isn’t the price that troubles me – affluence has a cost, you see. The phone’s selling point has nothing to do with features at all. Inside the stainless steel shell is a typical Series 40 phone with built in Bluetooth and EDGE capability. The enhanced SVGA camera (0.5 megapixels as compared to the usual 0.3MP VGA cams) barely makes up for the average battery life and average sound quality. But what the heck, at least the phone’s design is a good conversation piece, especially when you get to talking about the price.
If it’s fashion you want then this beats everything else the Finns have released! However, if you’re after functionality, you might as well buy a new laptop with the money you could have saved.
What do you think? With the way technology depreciates every second, is it worth investing in one of these? I’d be a bit cautious to call these types of phones as “today’s precious gems.”
