Nokia’s clique of premium phones have always enjoyed a good ole “I’m considerably richer than yow” slagging match with the uber-luxury Vertu brand at the Ambassador’s ball. Invariably, the more expensive Vertu always had the last word.
But instead of walking out with its haute couture tail between its legs, Nokia is fighting back with its latest 8800 model, by cranking up the feature set to match its undoubted high society style.
As follow-up to the feature air-head 8800 Sirocco, the Arte finally brings 3G and a solid 3.2-mgeapixel camera to the designer dinner party table. Not only that but the Finnish outfit has refined the Arte’s look with an elegant noir minimalist design and a more streamlined torso. Naturally, it’s still plated with hi-grade stainless steel for a weighty presence and put together with the precision of Swiss-made timepiece.
The Arte also retains the most satisfyingly weighty and slick slider action on the mobile scene - no other handset has come close to matching its mercurial ball-bearing mechanism. Nokia has also glazed the Arte in an anti-fingerprint varnish to ward of those pesky greasy pinkie, although its not 100% effective, while the dazzling two-inch 16-million screen is protect by scratch resistant glass.
There’s no major usability niggles with the Arte: it plays out with Nokia’s world famous unfussy attitude while the tight buttons on the Sirocco keypad have been angled for easier thumb purchase.
The 3.2-megapixel snapper with autofocus lacks the Sony Ericsson Cyber-shot clan’s eye for detail but still cracks out decent enough snaps despite an inkling of digital noise. Better still is the VGA-quality video capture that serves up slick-moving dailies.
The 8800 Arte is hard to fault, except for one mutha of boobs. With a generous 1GB wodge of internal memory but no card slot to expand, this storage skimp puts the shackles on an otherwise great music player.
Verdict
doubt Nokia’s finest luxury blower to date with a feature cast to rival its stellar build quality and design. Not even the storage weakness will stop poseurs everywhere from getting their mitts on this baby.
Best features
High class minimalist design
Awesome build quality
Slick slider action
Decent 3.2-megapixel camera
Not so good
No memory expansion plan
100% secured payment
