Nokia 8800 Arte
Mobile phone
Ted Gibbons | Tuesday, July 29 2008Now, with that out of the way, I can move on to say that the 8800 Arte is actually a very nice phone. Its sheer heft and solidity, thanks to the generous use of glass and stainless steel, will be something you haven’t experienced before and it does actually push at least one tech boundary with the use of an OLED screen.
This screen is just 50mm – small in this day and age – and it’s not easy to see in full sunlight, but when you can see it's stunning. Crisp and bright, it has superb contrast and wonderful colour saturation and gradation – 16 million colours, in fact. A built-in ambient light sensor also ensures the screen always looks its best. OLED uses less power than a standard screen too. Pity that the front glass face of the phone tends to be something of a fingerprint magnet.
Another cool feature of the 8800 that makes it at least a little different is the fact that you can achieve things by manipulating the phone itself. If you want to mute an incoming call you just flip the phone on its back. If you want to see the analogue clock you just shake the phone twice or tap it a couple of times on the screen.
In keeping with the idea that this is a phone for jet-setters, you’ll also find some included applications that are not to be found on your standard phone like a clothing size converter and a language translator.
Another very welcome application is the Opera mini browser, which is currently the best and quickest around for rendering internet pages on your mobile.
Elsewhere, the 8800 Arte is pretty standard. Anyone who’s handled a Nokia recently will be right at home. And Nokia’s onscreen menu navigation is still top of the class.
The phone is nicely balanced too, with a good sliding mechanism but I wasn’t keen on the key set up. The top row of keys on the keypad is too close to the top edge of the slider so that your thumb bangs into the edge when trying to use them. The keys themselves, on the other hand, are nicely delineated and easy to find by touch. I also had a problem with the five-way navigator in that it if I wasn’t very careful I’d end up selecting something when I was trying to move, or move when I was trying to select something.
Having no headphones is something of a drawback when it comes to the music player. But you could always go the wireless Bluetooth route via the A2DP stereo standard. You’re not, after all, going to find too many wired headphones with a microUSB connector.
Rounding out the 8800 Arte’s abilities is a very good 3.2-megapixel camera that also shoots video. You should note, however, that despite being 3G, this phone does not have a second camera for video calls.
On the memory front you get 1GB built in but no expansion. This will bug music fans and keen multimedia users.
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