Nokia 8800 Arte review

We review the Nokia 8800 Arte, a luxury 3G mobile with a mouth-watering design and high-end build quality. But is it enough to entice big-spenders?

If you're forking out a pile of cash for a luxury phone, are features and functionality your main priorities or is pure desirability the deciding factor? The premium handsets that make up Nokia's high-end Arte class - the 8800 Arte and 8800 Sapphire Arte - are impressively designed handsets, all minimalist chic and high quality, solid materials. And to go with the swish sliderphone look, Nokia has set them up with an attractive set of features, including 3G connectivity, a 3.2-megapixel camera, music player functionality plus 1GB of internal storage.

But Nokia hasn't gone all-out to cram in the very latest, most high-spec technology possible. They don't have smartphone operating systems underpinning their performance, for example, instead using the familiar standard Series 40 user interface found on mainstream Nokia phones. GPS receivers for onboard Sat Nav aren't on the spec list, the latest high-speed HSDPA and Wi-Fi connectivity technologies are absent, there's no swappable memory card capability, the camera doesn't have a flash, and there's no face-to-face video calling option either.

The spec sheet does have a few novel Nokia flourishes, in line with it understatedly elegant look. A double-tap of the lower section of the phone's front panel pulls up an analogue clock face onscreen for a quick time check, while simply turning the phone face down can silence inconvenient incoming calls.

Design and handling
That's not what you pay the big bucks for though. The Nokia 8800 Arte is built from quality glass and metal, with engineering attention to detail extending to a rather smooth bit of ball-bearing action on its spring-loaded slider. The phone is a classy bit of work. With a hidden numberpad under the slider, and concealed backlit control keys, the surface is smooth, glossy and black, offset with a subtle touch of chrome edging.

Its more expensive bronze-look Nokia 8800 Sapphire twin is effectively the same under the surface, but cranks up the exclusivity factor with a sapphire for its central navigation pad, and brown leather upholstery on the front and back.

The luxury element is further established in the box of tricks that comes with the Artes. You get a sleek Nokia Bluetooth headset (BH-803), a heavyweight Nokia Desk Stand for the phone, and a leather pouch to protect your investment when you're not showing it off.

One peculiar oversight is the lack of stereo headphones in-box - a must-have for anyone vaguely interested in listening to tunes, particularly as Nokia has passed, too, on putting a standard 3.5mm headphone socket in this phone. A 3.5mm socket would have allowed regular earphones to be added; instead, there's only one microUSB socket for charging, data connection to a PC, and headphone connection. You can add stereo Bluetooth headphones, however.

The build and handling of the 8800 Arte are impressive. It's a real heavyweight at 150g, despite its typical-sized 109(h) x 45.6(w) x 14.6(d) mm dimensions. It's solid in the hand and weighty in the pocket in that reassuringly expensive object-of-desire, pocket-dragging kind of way. It has a nice and bright OLED display, but its 2-inch QVGA 16-million colour screen isn't the biggest Nokia supplies - it's average mid-tier size.

The numberpad slips out ultra-smoothly, and while occupying a narrow space, is comfortable to tap thanks to well-crafted, slightly rounded keys. Again, elegant and functional.

The 8800 Arte's keypad glows into life when the screen is activated, and you get a familiar Nokia Series 40 user experience. This wrapped up in bespoke themes and wallpapers, plus ringtones and sounds Nokia has commissioned from producers Kruder & Dorfmeister, along with visuals by Fritz Fitzke.

The Arte's chic appearance is enhanced by its subtly backlit control pad and keys that come into play when the slide is opened or calls come in. There are no fast fire-up keys for the camera or the music player, but in a normal Nokia way you can assign shortcuts to the navigation pad and softkeys. You can easily set it to use Nokia's useful Active Standby info and shortcut-laden standby page too, but this looks a touch cluttered for the minimalist 8800 Arte, so it's not the out-of-the-box setting.

Camera quality
You'd hope for a decent camera with such an image conscious mobile. The 3.2-megapixel camera here isn't at all bad. It doesn't have a dedicated snapshot button, so you have to click the navigation pad to capture (either in default portrait or landscape). But it is able to produce high quality images. It has a welcome autofocus system that enables you to focus on particular elements of an image more like a standalone camera. But it is limited. While it's fine in reasonable lighting conditions, there's no flash, so it isn't able to cope well with lower-light conditions, which is disappointing if you like snapping in bars or clubs.

The camera takes well balanced images in good light, with decent details and colour rendition. But it's not one of Nokia's highest spec cameras - and at its high-end price, you might expect the best. You can capture video clips, though, at reasonable quality for a mobile, shooting at VGA resolution at 15 frames per second.

Music player
The lack of a MicroSD slot limits how much music you can carry with you. 1GB is generous internal storage for a mid-tier phone, but with MicroSDs of 2GB and over relatively inexpensive, swappable cards would be a more welcome option for anyone serious about tune-playing.

We expect anyone who can afford an 8800 Arte won't worry if they have to splash out extra for earphones or a headphone adapter (they may be bundled by some dealers anyway). We had some Nokia microUSB earphones lying around to trial the music player, and the performance is perfectly acceptable through these. The interface is unassumingly straightforward to operate, with a typical set of categories for tunes (artists, albums, genres and videos). Playback through the loudspeaker is better than average, loud and clear sound - apart from the usual lack of decent bass, like most mobiles.

The Arte's 3G capability enables high speed over-the-air downloads of tunes and video tacks, from your mobile network's own portal or other services (if compatible). It also facilitates fast web browsing; the 8800 Arte has two web browser applications loaded, a standard Nokia one and the popular Opera Mini Java app, which comes pre-loaded.

Nokia's browser doesn't have the complexity of its smartphone equivalent, although the Opera Mini browser does a good job at formatting full web pages for a mobile screen. You get a good search set-up too. Nokia also includes its web-based information and update app, WidSets. This allows you to set up a bunch of widgets from a wide variety of websites on a single page, so you can get regular updates without having to fire up the browser.

The 8800 Arte has the usual Nokia Series 40 standard features rundown, including email (with attachment) support, a full set of organiser software, a text to voice application, speaker independent voice control and voice memo facilities. There's a golf game included too, plus a language translator function, and you can tweak images after shooting.

Performance
Nokia battery life claims of 300 hours standby, up to 3 hours 20 minutes talktime on GSM networks or 2 hours 45 minutes of 3G network talk, aren't anything out of the ordinary. Our tests suggest that every couple of days or so you could be charging up the phone to keep it ticking over. Not excessive, but again fairly standard for a Nokia mid-tier 3G workhorse.

There's no question that the Nokia 8800 Arte is a delightful looking and well-crafted handset. Its build quality is excellent, and handling is comfortable - provided you don't mind a real heavyweight in your pocket or bag. Its call performance is first class too. But you can't escape the fact that under the expensive skin, there isn't a whole heap of extra functionality to lift this model feature-wise over one of the mid-tier 6500 models, let alone one of Nokia's latest multimedia-rich devices like the N95 8GB.

But when it comes down to it, the appeal of luxury mobiles isn't about how they score for value against cheaper handsets, or how much more functionality you get for your bucks - it's more about quality of materials, performance and sheer desirability. And, ultimately, those factors are what will sway any potential buyers of this handset.

Nokia 8800 Arte technical specifications.

 

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