Nokia 8800 Arte Review

Camera:

Despite that Arte has not been created as a multimedia phone, it offers such functions. The phone is equipped with a 3-megapixel camera with autofocus, but no flash. Its interface is in a portrait mode (landscape also available) and it has a 2-second startup time. It is very simple: on the view-finder is visualized information on the remaining pictures, the resolution, the compression, a digital zoom indicator and the mode (picture/video).

From the camera options, you are able to choose a resolution from 160x120 to 2048x1536 pixels, to add a color effect, to set the white balance, a countdown timer and to activate the night-mode.

The quality of the pictures justifies the camera – they are good enough to record a moment. The images are better than average, but cannot be compared with the top cameraphones from the last generation, which had the same resolution. It is pointless to try snapping pictures in a dark environment since there is no flash.


Those of you, who like shooting videos, will be very pleased, because Arte can record such with resolution up to 480 x 640 pixels and 15 fps. The quality is average and very noisy at times, but overall quite acceptable.

Nokia 8800 Arte sample video at 640x480 pixels resolution


Multimedia:

The last entry to in the Nokia’s 8800 series is equipped with a media player, supporting the following formats: MP3, AAC, eAAC+, WMA, 3GPP, H.263 and H.264. We are very happy with the sound level of the loudspeaker. As in the most phones, only the highs were audible. The videos, converted in the corresponding formats with a resolution 320 x 240, also run quite good.


Software:

As most Series 40 phones, Nokia Arte comes with preloaded applications: Download!, Converter, Size Converter, Translator, My Nokia, Search, Opera Mini, WidSets and World Clock. There also are a few games to waste your time with, but if you don’t like them more are available for download.

The phone supports Java MIDP 2.1 and this allows you to download additional applications you like.