Nokia 8800 Arte review

[Review conducted on behalf of MyADSL]

Since the introduction of mobile phones, manufacturers have strived to include more features to make the devices more powerful. Thanks to latest technologies such as nanotechnology, fabricators are given the possibility to customize the size of components, therefore creating diverse visuals, and different form factors. This is where style comes into play for mobile phones.

Nokia already has a line of luxury phones which stands by the name of Vertu. The brand is independently run, but it’s a subsidiary of Nokia. These phones cost thousands of dollars and are obviously directed to the richest among us. Another series was needed, for the ones who can afford to splash cash, but not as much as for Vertu phones. So in 2004, the 8800 phones were announced.

The first of the series was Nokia 8800 which had a stainless steel body with scratch-resistant glass, mixed with a suave design and caught the hearts of many of us. For the Russian there was a black version, and for the US there was a 8801 variant. There was neither 3G nor a memory card slot, consumers had to content themselves with 64MB of internal memory. The phone was released in the first quarter of 2005.

Along came the Nokia 8800 Sirocco, which had the body made out of glossy steel and a display protected by sapphire glass. Improvements counted with a 2 megapixel camera, an upgrade from the previous model which only had a SVGA camera. The memory card slot was missing as well, but the internal memory had been doubled to 128MB. You could find the phone in silver, black, or gold edition, and it became available in September 2006.

A year later, roundabout December 2007, the Nokia 8800 Arte was presented. The phone contains the same elegant design as the 8800 Sirocco, but now in a strong black, with 3G connectivity, a 3.2 megapixel camera, 1GB on-board memory, and an updated retail package with stylish accessories. The phone is triband, supporting GSM 900, 1800, 1900, and UMTS 2100.

Complete specification of Nokia 8800 Arte as follows:

Operating System:

Competition against the 8800 Arte is rather weak, most phones we see from Nokia’s rivals do not target the same market, or have these kinds of prices.

• Presentation

The contents of the retail package are as follows:

1. Nokia 8800 Arte device

2. Nokia BH-803 Bluetooth headset

3. Desk stand DT-19

4. BL-4U 1000mAh battery

5. CA-101 data cable (microUSB)

6. AC-6 charger

7. Nokia 8800 Arte/Sapphire Arte user manual

8. Nokia BH-803 user manual

9. Nokia 8800 Arte/Sapphire Arte PC Suite CD

10. Leather pouch

The box itself is very elegant, having a full black design. To start, there is a removable cover, which when removed, unveils a simple black box, although there is a Nokia brand written on top and on the side, with a strong black tone. The only thing that isn’t black on the outside of the cover is the warranty sticker and the “BH-803” sticker for the Bluetooth headset.

Getting to the phone will take some time, as there are two flaps to open. The first flap unveils a smart design of the phone in grey outline across two flaps. When opened the second flap, we see the phone and the Bluetooth headset inside their plastics.

When removed from this top platform, we can see a package, again in black, with black sticky tape. When open, there is an enclosure for the CD, which contains the PC Suite. There are also two books, one is the phone’s manual, while the second is the Bluetooth headset’s manual. Impressively, the latter one is far thicker than the previous one, due to all languages portrayed in the manual. Next to the package, we find the desk stand in black as well, and with a round shape. There are also two cables, one is the data cable microUSB-USB, and the other is the charger microUSB-AC. Beneath the package there is a leather pouch. The accessories will be described later in the review.

Time to put the phone in the spotlight:

The first thing we notice in the 8800 is that it’s very heavy comparing to other phones. I believe that this is justifiable by the materials used: sapphire, glass, and stainless steel. Its predecessors weren’t as heavy: the 8800 Arte stands at 150g, followed by the 8800 Sirocco at 138g, and lastly the 8800 at 134g.

In size terms the 8800 Arte contains decent dimensions when compared to an everyday phone when kept in candybar form, and when slid-open it possesses equal dimensions to most slider phones. The exact dimensions are 109 x 45,6 x 14,6 mm, while the 8800 Sirocco stood at 107 x 45 x 17,5 mm, and the first 8800 measured 107 x 45 x 15 mm.

On the hand, the phone feels solid and not slippery. There are no shaky parts, and you probably won’t hear anything moving inside. I said probably, as the only parts that make noise when the phone is shaken violently (most normal people won’t do) are the buttons for the battery cover, the two of them.

Continuing with the battery cover, it contains two buttons that you press and slide out the cover. The cover is matt unlike the rest of the phone, so it does not contain visible fingerprints or other marks that glossy phones usually sustain. The inside of the cover is of a grey colour, which is most probably stainless steel.

The battery compartment has little space, which is used to remove the battery, but in general there is a tight, strong, and secure fit for the battery. The battery itself, a BL-4U, is longer than usual but thinner and slimmer (the usual here being BL-5C and BL-5F). The base for the battery is again stainless steel, and on top of the compartment you can see two screws on each side, the battery connector, and in the middle is the SIM card compartment and it’s relatively easy to insert and remove the SIM cards.

The keys in the device are layered out differently, as this is not your average slider. On front side of the phone there is a ambience light detector on the top-left corner, a speaker on the middle-top section, and just below it, the Nokia symbol.

The display is almost invisible in this pitch darkness, but below it are two soft keys, a navigation key, and two call keys. The navigation key looks like a navi-wheel in black, and it’s mentioned as Navi-key in the user manual. The rest of the four keys are literally invisible as they look like touch-keys, although they aren’t, their lights only lit when needed, and although there is absolutely no horizontal dividers between them, it’s easy to locate and differentiate them.

The bottom piece, which is divided by two lines of stainless steel, is a mere sensor, which interprets touches. It comes in play for the clock activation (press twice), and to silence calls and alarms (flip phone around). Around the phone on the left, top, right, and bottom sides, there is a slim stainless steel line which runs through, and contrasts against the full blackness of the phone.

On the right side of the phone there is a button to release the battery cover, and just above it, is a slim and long speaker hole. It is almost twice as long as the N95’s speaker, but relatively thin. There is no visible grid, just the hole itself.

On the left side of the phone, we only find the button to release the battery cover.

On top, there is a On/Off/Profile button in stainless steel, the slimness of the button only allows a comfortable press when the device is in a candybar form.

On the bottom, there is a microphone and a microUSB port.

When the device is slid open, the numeric keypad is revealed. The usual 12 keys are present, but although they are very thin and quite wide, the typing is done effortlessly as they are carefully rounded, and the ‘5′ key has the usual bumps. However, on the first row, you might face difficulties to type as it is too close to the front panel elevation. On the four sides around the keypad, there is a tiny but important detail: there is glass. Whenever the white keypad backlight is lit, the glass reflects the light, adding a shine to the glass itself, especially at night, this is a minimal detail, but it does add glamour to the phone.

Few disappointing details is the light escaping below the call keys, and the excessive gloss surface, which attract a great number of fingerprints, mostly visible at daytime.

At daytime we are faced with another challenge: Nokia hasn’t got many phones with OLED displays, and this QVGA display shows strong colours and correct brightness adjustment, but in direct sunlight, visibility becomes reduced.

Battery was one of my concerns. Seeing 1000mAh was a great increase form the 8800 Sirocco which had 700mAh, and the 8800 which had only 600mAh. I ran the phone for three days without a single bar going down, I used Bluetooth, made few voice calls, used GPRS, and USB data transfer, and it’s quite exceptional for a battery to last this long.

• Software

The 8800 Arte relies on the Nokia OS with S40 UI 5^th edition. It is not a smartphone, and only possesses multitasking capabilities with the music player, which you can run at the same time as Java applications as well.

The 5^th edition standby screen includes an active standby which features a horizontal scrollable first row which carries applications’ shortcuts, which you can personalize. The second row is dedicated to the music player, it presents the status of the track, the Artist and track title, it allows to forward and backward, but not stop or pause the track. Below this row is the organizer with the date and notes, and below it, very useful quick notes. As usual, there is a top row with a clock on the top-right corner, and a network and battery indicator on the top-left corner.

The selection is made by three keys, which are configurable, besides the middle key, which is used for the Menu. You can browse the Menu in list, grid, grid with labels, or tab view.

Heading to the Menu, we are faced with Messaging, the “Create message” section allows text message (SMS), MMS, email message, flash message, audio message, and to choose templates.

The message viewer is divided in two fields: the message itself, and the details of the message. The copy and paste function was incorporated as well, but it isn’t as easy to use as in S60 devices.

In the messaging settings there are new options such as “overwriting in sent”and “favourite recipient”, and you can also select graphical smileys.

Email was one feature that I was looking forward it, as it retrieves your settings automatically, but I faced the usual problem with most S40 phones: the internet settings. There are so many settings, that it gets confusing to get them up and running. To get a notion of how it affects users, simply go the Forum MXit, and see the difficulties the users find on setting up the IM client on S40 phones.

Once I got the internet working, it gave me an error saying that it could not connect to the email wizard server (I input my GMail address). I tried again, and it successfully retrieved GMail’s IMAP settings. Disaster struck again when I tried to synchronize my email, it kept on failing no matter how many times I pressed retry. Whether it’s the phone’s fault or the network I was using at the time (Virgin Mobile), I don’t know.

In the Contacts application, you can copy numbers, add images, set videotones, set groups, and synchronize with a server.

Log application is now divided in Missed Calls, Received Calls, Dialled numbers, Message Recipients, Call duration, Data counter, Packet Data timer, Message log, and even an option to synchronize the log with another phone. The new functions might prove quite functional and effective, erasing the need of Itemised data bill reports.

Settings are fully customizable when it comes to the display, where you can define a colour for standby fonts, and many other options, such as to switch off active standby, change themes, profiles, tones, connectivity, and synchronize and backup, where you can choose either a phone or PC.

The Gallery is also improved, and there is one function where it beats S60 galleries and multimedia menus, which is straight-forward search. Browsing the folders reveals the included 6 themes, living wallpapers, clip-arts, frames, static wallpapers, AAC wake-up tones, 10 videotones, 6 alert tones, and 11 AAC ringtones. You can choose the browse the gallery folders with a list and details, a simple list, or grid view.

The Media application features Camera, Video, Music Player, Voice Recorder (with no setting options), a sleek equalizer, and Stereo widening.

The Organizer combines Alarm clock, which has a repeat option where you can select which days the alarm should ring, and snooze time intervals. There is a calendar which displays notes for the selected day in split-screen view and an option to auto-delete notes. You can also find a To-do list, notes, Calculator, Countdown timer, and a Stopwatch.

The Applications section is divided in Games and Collection. All downloaded applications land up in games somehow.

The only game included is Golf Tour, which seems appropriate for the rich (the only ones who can afford this phone). There is always a Nokia link, here and in the Gallery folders. The options in the Applications section allow to update the specific application, and to set application access in regard of Communication, Data access, and Auto-start.

The Collection section contains a Converter in Java, with a sleek UI, and even a custom conversion setting. There is also a Downloads application which we find in S60 phones, and it’s quite similar to it. Opera Mini 3.1 is included and it allows much better browsing than the built-in browser, which will be discussed in short, later in the review. Windows Live Search is also installed, but not integrated in the phone, only as a Java application. Nokia Sensor is included, although I don’t think anyone uses it. There is a Size Converter program which converts clothes measurements in different units. A useful Translator is present, with English, French, German, Spanish, and Italian. To end up, Widsets also come with the phone, and a World Clock.

A scientific calculator with fractions, square roots, radians, trigonometry, and Pi correct to 13 places is installed, but you can opt for the simple calculator view.

The few disadvantages I found in the software is the lack of an automatic timed keypad lock, and there is no visible combination of keys to achieve a keypad lock. A quick inspection of the user manual revealed…absolutely nothing. To lock the keypad you need to slide up the phone, and slide it back down, and then press Lock.

The web browser isn’t anywhere near the S60 browser, so Opera Mini was included. In the default browser we can set text wrapping, font size, Javascript, page title view, and screen size. There is no history section, only a link to the last address visited.

• Connectivity

Bluetooth v2.0 provides a clear voice transmission to the included BH-803 Bluetooth headset, but there is no Infrared nor Wi-Fi, which would be useful to connect to the many hotspots found today.

3G helps in increasing the speed for internet browsing and downloading, but you cannot execute videocalls, as there is no front camera on the device.

In the USB connectivity menu there is a Printing and Media option, which I believe it’s PictBridge, a nice feature which makes printing easier, although the camera here isn’t exactly one of the best.

Another USB option is mass storage mode. I tested the data transfer rates against a N95 8GB, as both phones have a considerable flash memory and no memory card slot. The test showed that the 8800 Arte was left far behind at 0.41MB/sec while the N95 8GB stood at 0.62MB/sec. The test file was an MP3 audio file with 119MB. You can visualize the complete test here: http://phonereport.info/2008/04/12/usb-data-transfer-test-n95-8gb-vs-8800-arte/

• Camera

The 3.2 megapixel camera has autofocus but there is a tremendous lack of quality which sets it back from phones such as Nokia N73, and here it’s not only the Carl Zeiss lens that’s missing.

The resolutions that it’s capable of is: 2048×1536; 1600×1200; 1280×900; 640×480; 320×240; 160×120. The video capture is possible at 640×480 at 15fps, but again the quality is quite limited.

There are quite a lot of options available, but they do not show in the viewfinder, one must go to the settings. You can set white balance, set image sequence, set self-timer, choose night mode, and set brightness amount.

The viewfinder in in portrayed mode by default, but you can change it to landscape mode, but the display’s 2” looks so small that it makes no difference. The capture key is the the middle button of the Navi-key, so it’s really hard to capture images comfortably. For night images in pitch darkness the phone’s camera is useless as there is no flash, and the night-mode doesn’t help at all.

The image processing after capture takes too long, and while it’s processing, the clock is shown, although I’m not sure why.

• Sound

The Music player has an excellent UI, but the disappointment here is that there are no earphones included in the package, and I don’t know if the firmware supports any audio enhancement on the microUSB port. The Music Player supports AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, MP3, MP4, WMA, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, Mobile XMF, SP-MIDI, and MIDI Tones (poly 64). The equalizer as I said previously, has a sleek design, and has predefined settings for pop, rock, jazz, classical, and provides two custom sets. The Music Player itself is divided in Playlists, Artists, Albums, Genres, and videos.

The speaker is quite clear and stereo, but not very loud, what I noticed is that a second speaker is missing in order to provide quality stereo sound.

The built-in 1GB memory can be useful for music, but again, earphones would complete the music section of the phone, and are an accessory that is really missing from the device.

• Extras

The desk stand is very elegant, not just for the glossy outward material, but also for the design, where it’s flat and rounded at the same time, there is a good balance between both which makes it look good. There is a glass line around the bottom of the stand which is white light that shines when the phone is charging, and is kept still when the phone is fully charged. It’s relatively easy to insert the phone, as there is a microUSB connector attached on the stand, where you simple put the phone on.

The Bluetooth headset is elegant and slim, but it doesn’t feel very well in the ear, but for that there is a wire support that you can put around the ear, and it’s almost invisible as it’s just a black wire. The downside of the BH-803 is the volume sensor, which you have to slide up or down depending on the desired volume, it’s just too difficult to get the sliding correct, although it was a good try from Nokia in order to come up with something innovative.

Another downside is the DSP technology used to remove any external noise in the Bluetooth headset, as in my opinion, reduces the voice quality for the one who is wearing the headset, although it increases the volume considerably.

The leather case has a extremely tight fit, and it takes long to remove the phone from it, although it’s easy to insert the phone in it. It holds the phone strongly, and the tough leather protects it from scratches. Another type of pouch could have been chosen, such as the one in the N73 Special edition or the N93, but again, Nokia tried to come up with something new.

• Conclusion

A major discussion of the phone is the weight, many consumers might find it unsuitable, but I don’t. I think that everytime you grab the phone, and you feel it in your hands, you know that there are precious metals in it, and besides that, it let’s you know that the phone is there. Another problem is the software, is S40 suitable after all? Some might argue this, but the 8800 Arte should be direct to businessmen and businesswomen as well, so S60 would be a necessary add-on to the phone’s features, I particularly missed it as I’m used to it, although the included software was an excellent choice. The camera could have been tweaked, and maybe kept at 2 megapixel, as long as the quality was anything better than this. A simple but necessary accessory missing was the earphones, and it was shameful from Nokia that they did not include them.

The build quality is exceptional, and overall appearance is beautiful, it certainly made many heads turn, but it’s truly not affordable. Bringing the price down could have increased sales, and some extra publicity in posh areas in South Africa such as Sandton would gather attention as well.

• Verdict

By examining the conclusion, one simple change would have brought my choice of rating up: the price. The lowest price I found in South Africa is R13 500, which is ridiculous and would rather classify this phone as a low-end Vertu.

The choice of features, retail package and outwards appearance was the big advantage of the phone.

Rating: 7.3/10

Advantages: Sapphire, glass, and stainless steel body; stylish retail package; long-lasting battery; well-laid out keys.

Disadvantages: Display can’t cope with sunlight; price is excessive; software could have been S60 (smartphone); earphones not included.