The Nokia 8850 remains Nokia's premier phone along with its sister the 8890 which is the same phone but with Tri-band functionality meaning that you can use it in the US. The 8850 itself is Dual-band so it work on all major networks in the UK (Vodaphone, Cellnet, Orange, One2One).
The 8850 is encased in a sleek brushed aluminium casing with silver trim and has a black head sporting the Nokia logo. The keypad is accessible via a slider at the front while the long life lithium battery sits at the back. The aerial is internal to the unit running along its right hand side. The screen carries the traditional Nokia menu system with a blue backlight, which makes a refreshing change from the usual yellow backlight on other Nokia phones. Once the slider is down to reveal the keypad it also illuminates in a blue light for a period of 10 second to allow the user to clearly see the keys (although this feature can be turned off).
The phone is able to store 250 names in its memory and contains the standard Nokia ring tones plus 7 free spaces to store your own. For those wishing to link this phone to a laptop the good news is that this unit has infrared and a built in 9,600k modem (a CD-ROM is included when you purchase the unit). The modem is obviously slow but this is due to the limit of the standard cellular network. It’s not really that much use for surfing the web but is adequate for collecting e-mail and other text based tasks.
Battery life on the phone is good. I am not going to quote what the manufacturers say the talk time is as I don’t always agree with that. I found that the phone could last for about 48 hours with few calls; this is dependent on signal conditions however. I found that this phone does get rather hot after extended use. This was rather uncomfortable if you were not using a hand-free kit.
This phone carries a high price tag at £299 and although I would recommend this phone based on its stylish look I think it is important to point out that minus the styling most of the features of this phone are available on the 8820 which is now available with a sub £50 price tag.
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An excellent review of the handset. I always liked the look of these but I didn't think that the price was justified - most people seem to agree as you very rarely see thses in use. :O)
Advantages: Size, look, amazing battery life, relative exclusiveness, range of features Disadvantages: High Price, not available across all networks, backlit screen can be hard to read in partial light conditions
AndyConnolly 22.03.2001 (23.03.2001)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Nokia 8850
Advantages: Features, charisma, style, lots of power tightly compace, and according to the scientists one of the safest phones out there Disadvantages: cost
butler_sophie 14.12.2000 ·
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Nokia 8850
Sep 7th, 2001
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