Nokia 8800 Carbon Arte review

A cell phone has become a luxury item and people are ready to splurge hundreds to dollars to own a unique cell phone. Catering to that market, Nokia has a series names “Arte” which is not feature rich, but has uber cool looks and costs a bomb! Nokia 8800 Carbon Arte is the latest fashion statement to hit the market. Exquisite styling, rare materials, unique design all add up and give rise to the Nokia 8800 Carbon Arte. It is pretty much similar to the Nokia 8800 Arte except for a few enhancements.

Nokia 8800 Carbon Arte specifications :

• Dimensions : 109 x 45.6 x 14.6 mm
• Weight : 150 g
• Display : 2.0 inch OLED with 240 x 320 resolution
• Memory : 4GB internal
• Connectivity : GPRS, EDGE, 3G
• Bluetooth : Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP
• USB : microUSB OTG
• Camera : 2.0 MP with autofocus
• Body : Carbon fibre and titanium
• Approx. price : $1300

Nokia 8800 Carbon is the third phone of the Nokia Arte series apart from Nokia 8800 and Nokia 8800 Sapphire. The Nokia 8800 Carbon Arte costs a bomb and is extremely underpowered for its price. But that isn’t what this phone aims for, it is aimed at fashion oriented people. It has been made using highly expensive materials such as carbon fibre and titanium.

Talking about the accessories bundled with the package, other than regular stuff, Nokia has bundled a bluetooth headset apart from the regular wired headset. The bluetooth headset bears striking resemblance to the Apple bluetooth headset. A stylish leather pouch for carrying the handset has also been included. A desktop charger also comes bundled, although you can charge the phone the normal way too. But you know what this phone is all about! A large cleaning cloth sums up the accessory bundle.

Design and Display

The design of the handset has not changed and is similar to its siblings, but we aren’t complaining. The keypad cover has been fabricated with carbon fibre and also on the rear panel. The rear panel is made of special fingerprint resistant material. Gray is the only color that this handset comes in.

The earpiece is located at the center above the display. The phone is essentially a slider phone with an extra surface below the keypad which it looks different. The key layout is like ancient Nokia phone, two soft keys and dedicated Call and End keys.

The display is a small 2.0″ OLED display with amazing picture quality. The display  supports 16M colors with QVGA resolution. OLED display not only have better brightness and contrast but consume less power as compared to their LCD counterparts. But very unlike Nokia, the display has poor sunlight visibility. A bigger display could surely have made its way to this phone.

Keypad and User Interface

Surprisingly has stuck with Symbian S40, 5th Edition as the OS for this phone. The standy screen has the battery indicator , signal strength and time. At the bottom you find the button functions for the two soft keys. You can also activate active standby which lets you navigate to applications via shortcuts on the standby screen.

The two soft keys’ functions can also be altered if you are not satisfied with the default ones. The main menu can be arranged in four different ways : a grid of icons with or without captions, a list of items, and tabs. There are plenty of themes available for you to choose from. The menu structure isn’t the best we have seen so far. The phone responsiveness is fast though and menus open zappily. The Flight Mode has also been included apart from the five different standard Nokia profiles.

The keypad has a class of its own. It isn’t like any of the keypads that you will find in other Nokia phones. It has medium sized keys which are separated from each other. The tactile feedback of the keys is great and typing with them is sheer pleasure. The only gripe is that there is less room between above and below the display.

Music Player and Camera

The music player is similar to what you would find on the Nokia Prism or Nokia 6500 for example. It isn;t as good as the Symbian 60 music player but it does its job well. And this phone does not target music enthusiasts, so the player is good enough. The player supports MP3, MIDI, AAc, AAC+ and WMA formats. A2DP profile allows you to stream music to a bluetooth headset.

The handset has only one speaker located on the right side on the phone. Sadly, it underperforms leading to scratchy audio quality. The equalisers and stereo widening are some of the settings you can tweak. No FM radio in included in the handset. The Video player can play both 3GP and MP4 formats and the video playback is smooth and good.

The camera also has a resolution of 3.0 MP, but it is below par to put it straight. The camera interface has few settings to tinker around with. The images have good amount of detail but colors are oversaturated. Also pictures have higher noise than anticipated leading to grainy pictures. The camera does not even have a dedicated camera button.

Web Browser and Organiser

Nokia 8800 Carbon Arte has two browsers inbuilt. The standard WAP browser with supports HTML and in unimpressive. Opera Mini is the second browser that comes pre-installed and is the best of the rest. There isn’t much to talk about Opera Mini than to praise it as it includes almost every feature that you would like in a mobile browser.

Organisers in Nokia phones have been praised from the S40 generation and Nokia 8800 Arte Carbon is no exception. It has great time management features embedded into the calendar. You can set various reminders, create notes, set alarms, schedule meetings etc in the calendar itself. Different views are available for calendar. The to-do manager helps in getting things done. Alarms can be repeated on preset days and you also get to choose snooze time. Shaking the phone twice displays you the clock.

There are many pre-installed applications on this phone including size converter, unit converter, search application, dictionary and a Golf Tour games. Inclusion of only a single game is a bit of disappointment. Overall a great organiser.

Pros :

• Excellent design
• Exquisite build quality
• Great keypad
• Sharp OLED display
• Opera Mini bundled
• Excellent organiser

Cons :

• Small display
• Old S40 interface
• Average camera
• Poor loudspeaker

Final Thoughts

The Nokia 8800 Carbon Arte is a premium segment phone, aimed towards fashion conscious people. It is made of carbon fibre and titanium. This phone is primarily about the looks and the feel. You have to hold it in the hand to feel it. Features aren’t of prime importance. So if you are fashion oriented, go splurge!

My Rating : Not Applicable!