Nokia 8800 Sirocco Gold

When I say that this is Nokia’s Golden boy I’m not speaking metaphorically. It’s a literal conceptualization of the idea. Nokia’s 8800 slider is not a new design concept. No Siree. This slider design has been around for awhile and I’m sure most of you will obviously have even heard and if lucky, seen the Sirocco Gold. For a guy like me, I saw it and immediately realized, this was way out of my league. Little did I realize that only months later I would actually have the opportunity to hold it in my hand and flaunt it like the rest of them. The moment I got it in my greedy little hands I looked over to my good buddy, and yours, Avinash Bali and said – Hey Homie, Bling, Bling!

Curves and Fixtures
The 8800 design has always fascinated me with its smooth contours and elegant yet sturdy look. The older, plain silver model, I can safely say had a metro-sexual (there’s that word again) look to it but I’m afraid I can’t say the same about this model. The Sirocco Gold, is just that, GOLD! I mean let’s be diplomatic here, not all guys can pull this one off. So ladies you got another gizmo here to titillate your fashion sense. Its 18-karat gold plated to boot. Too rich for my taste. It has a perfectly smooth sliding keypad casing that slides down to reveal an equally elegant keypad. The problem is that the bottom three keys can only be accessed easily with long fingernails. Hey, I said it could well be a strictly ladies phone didn’t I? The rest of the keys are fine though.

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What you may miss are the left and right selection keys that most phones have. These are the open keys that can be assigned to any function. They actually look like part of the frame and not keys. They’re placed right under the 1.2 inch scratch proof, TFT display (that has a resolution of 208x208 pixels with 262K colors). The 2 megapixel camera is located on the rear of the upper part of the phone. When the phone slides up you’ll see it. On the bottom you’ll find the 2.5mm earphones and charger port. The phone can also be charged using the ‘Golden Cradle’ that’s included.

My biggest problem with the overall design is that the darn thing is too shiny and is a fingerprint magnet. You’re going to have to either use gloves or carry plenty of tissues or soft cloths to clean off the smudges after using it. Sounds like too much of work for me. But the 8800 Sirocco Gold is also a lightweight phone at 138g.

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Elegant Features too?
Sadly no. The 8800 Sirocco Gold is not a feature rich phone. In fact it’s just plain average in that respect. Running on a S40 platform, it looks and feels just like any other S40 type phone out there. Although most of the embedded themes do complement the phone immensely, there’s really nothing else I can mention that makes this phone stand out. Aside form the fact that it’s made of freakin’ Gold!

It has all the standard features you would expect, like a calendar function with reminders, schedules and tasks. Alarm clock, World Clock, converter, stopwatch, countdown timer, notes, calculator applications are also present. Like I said before the last three keys are a bit of a pain in the ‘gold bricks’ (excuse the French) to reach so if you need to get to the symbols options to muffle out a few obscenities or type a zero or switch letter mode to all caps to state your emotion, it’s not easy. So this does make messaging a bit painful.

For some reason I could not get the proper configuration to connect to the net on this EDGE enabled phone. In the internet settings it already had options for Hutch and Airtel but no BPL. I wonder why the prejudice? Nevertheless if the older ones could be hooked up this one could too, so I had a buddy down at BPL help me out and Voila, I was hooked up. Not a great experience considering the small screen size, but it worked great anyhow.

The Sirocco Gold’s 2 megapixel camera quality was really, not good. It has settings for night mode, adjusting the white balance and 3 options for effects (greyscale, negative and sepia) that do adjust the camera quality, but doesn’t help too much. The pictures are full of digital noise and the clarity wasn’t too defined. It’s not anywhere as good as some of the other Nokia 2 megapixel camera phones out there.

While I was snapping away though, I failed to realize that a great task lay before me. How was I going to transfer the files onto the PC? The Sirocco Gold didn’t have a USB cable provided. Even the cute little gold charging station provided didn’t have a USB out. So I was going to have to use Bluetooth. It doesn’t even have a memory card to remove and insert into a card reader. But it does have 128MB of internal memory.

A tip, in case you ever end up with a similar phone, or find yourself in a similar predicament about transferring your files is to go the long way around – first transfer the files to a friends phone that does have USB connectivity. Or just go out and buy yourself a standard USB Bluetooth dongle for your PC.
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So connectivity-wise the 8800 Sirocco Gold is just blah. The good thing is you do get a set of earphones with the kit. You also get quite a good looking and comfortable Bluetooth headset as well.

The music player was ok. Though the sound quality was good, the volume was a bit too low. You can adjust the output using the EQ presets available or us the customizable EQ setting. It doesn’t make a world of difference but it helps. The acceptable formats are MP3, MP4, AAC, eAAC, eAAC+ and WMA formats. The Sirocco Gold also has an integrated FM radio and a voice recorder. Theres is also an option for sending audio SMS. This 8800 also has a couple of fun games to help pass the time like Chess, Pro Golf and Solitaire.

I didn’t really expect too much from the battery life but it did give me just about 2 hours and 40 minutes or so of talk time. Which isn’t bad nor is it too good either.

Price of Fashion (The Bottom Line)
This mega fashion statement or should I say Exclamation will set you back around Rs. 44,000. For a phone that doesn’t really offer too much in terms of features, at that price, other than its Bling value, I’m afraid it’s not worth it. But, to be fair the Sirocco Gold is a lifestyle product purely directed at the really upper class individual. So girls don’t expect this from your guys as any sort of present, just yet, and guys don’t go nuts, but if you’re even considering buying this for your girl, you may as well go all the way and buy that diamond ring they keep wanting. Trust me, it just may be cheaper.

Specs

| Nokia 8800 Sirocco Gold