Review Nokia 800 Tough

Posted in Reviews on December 6, 2019 by Stein Jürgen ‐ Download .

Nokia 800 Tough is more or less a dumbphone but it’s a rugged and robust phone proves the extreme things we have treated it with. See our not so normal review of Nokia 800 Tough with pros and cons and alternatives.

Review Nokia 800 Tough

Normally I go through features like display, camera, navigation speed, antenna quality, gaming experience and so on when reviewing phones – but I won’t do that as thoroughly with the Nokia 800 Tough.

It’s basically a dumbphone but it’s a very tough phone. The Nokia 800 Tough is 16 mm thick so it’s pretty thick. This is mainly because of the extra protection and the rugged design.

Nokia say it can be dropped from 1,8 meters on concrete without breaking it – I of course will challenge that – and then some. It features an IP68 rating for dust and water protection, nothing exciting about that, but it can also handle minus 20 degrees and + 50 degrees and survive – according to Nokia.

Extreme cold and heat

First I testet how well it handles extreme temperatures. I put it box with water in the fridge where it turned into a nice ice cube. The water was ice cold so it took around two hours for it to turn into this. As I dug it out of the ice I feared for how well it would work – but it turned out just fine. Fully functional.

It was also fully functional after we put it the dish washer – 50 degrees for more that 20 minutes – no problem.

The bike, car and throwing test – extremely durable

Now we wanted to drive things over it – first a big bike with me sitting on it – then a car with two people in it – three times we drove over it. It was still working like a new phone and no scratch on the display.

Nokia say it can be dropped from 1,8 meters on concrete without being damaged. Yes it can – but I also dropped it more than 10 times from 5-6 meters heigt – it got some scratches, but still looking fine and still working as brand new phone. The display was still normal looking.

Nokia 800 Tough is also a phone

Nokia 800 Tough is also a phone – not a good one of course compared to smartphones, but still. The display is 2,4 inch big with 320 x 240 pixel. Even a decade ago that was pretty bad.

The user interface is build on KaiOS – which sort of gives a smartphone-experience if we are kind-hearted with access to WhatsApp, Facebook and Google Maps. But: The UI is very old fashioned and not user-friendly. You have to scroll a lot to reach the different features. You can use Google Assisant to activate features and that is actually pretty neat on a phone like this.

The flash light is nice to have, so is the headphone jack.

The battery life is impressive with 43 days standby time – that could be a solid reason to choose this phone. The antenna quality seems alright but it’s not better than on many smartphones.

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Nokia 800 Tough