The Nokia 8800 Arte Mobile Phone - Martin's Quick Review

We recently got to review the Nokia 8800 Arte, a refresh on their two year old 8800 series design. Or rather, we got a review phone in, looked at the suggested retail price, and immediately became paranoid about setting it on the counter, leaving it in the car seat, or leaving it in the coat pocket.

At nearly £800 for one of these things, we were justifiably cautious. Nokia is aiming for the mobile phone as status object set with this, and it shows. The manufacturing and overall quality is stunning – the smooth roller bearings make the slide mechanism feel luxurious. It's got a small gemstone as the select button, and instead of plastic, it's made from precision machined stainless steel and high impact glass with coatings to resist fingerprints, with leather accents.

This was the first mobile that my daughter didn't clamor to carry around for two days. She's only sixteen, and she knew full and well that if it got broken or dropped, she didn't want to think about the consequences to her allowance.

In terms of overall design, it's got a middle of the line 3.2 megapixel camera with decent autofocus and color correction. It's running System 43, and has a very Macintosh dock-like scrolling menu bar with context sensitive icons for applications. The screen is gorgeous and uses OLEDs, which should, in theory, save on battery life.

The slider form factor was well thought out – the buttons are easy to reach for one-thumb dialing, and there are motion sensors built in that will let you turn it over to mute it. It comes with a nice noise canceling Bluetooth earbud, and like every mobile phone made in the last three years, will do reasonable duty as an MP3 and music player.

All of the emphasis on quality of materials and such means that it's denser and heavier than you'd expect. It's not as bad as some of the smart phone wrist breakers I've tested, but it's noticeably more substantial in your palm than, say, the Nokia Prism.

Call quality was good, but not as miraculous as some of the Sony Ericcson models, that seem to be able to pluck a signal from the bottom of a well. Sound quality was more than good enough, and the noise canceling headset is quite good. This contrasts with the earlier Nokia 8800, which unsuccessfully aimed for the "phone as status object" market, but had lackluster features as a phone. Nokia's 8800 Arte update has better features as a camera and music player, and the screen is gorgeous.

Ultimately, this phone isn't aimed at me. I regard a phone as a tool; while I'm no neophyte with them, I also figure that they're going to be replaced every two to three years of regular use. I can't see justifying the expense for something with hand crafted engineering when an off the shelf phone that costs a quarter as much will do four times the things this one will. My daughter is more in line with the "phone as fashion accessory" trend, and she was afraid to touch it for fear of breaking it.

Ultimately, there was a lot of relief when we packed it up to send back to Nokia. If you'd like to spend less, compare the cheapest Nokia 8800 Arte mobile contract deals, or alternatively take your pick of the UK's top free gifts contract deals with cheap mobile phones to get the best offers currently available in the marketplace. By purchasing your phone online it's possible to stretch your money by a considerable amount.