Review of GSM/UMTS-handset Nokia 8800 Arte/Sapphire Arte

Mobile-review have posted their review of the luxurious Nokia 8800 Arte. Here is the final impression.

The volume of 64-chord ring tones is quite high, so you are very unlikely to miss a call, but, since there is only one loudspeaker, mounted on the right-hand flank at that, it was not a rare occasion when we had the Arte in our jeans and didn’t hear it ring. In terms of reception quality, the phone is flawless. The vibro alert is middling strength-wise, but you will feel the phone’s vibration while it is in your pocket.

Those who hate missing calls can opt for some non-original, yet loud tunes – you will have to sacrifice some of the sonic experience, but will definitely gain in volume.

This phone is an icon, and judging it on its technological talents makes no sense at all – people have always been buying it as a symbol of their status, or at least that’s what owners of all iterations of the Nokia 8800 have come to believe. That’s why the Arte’s extremely grease-prone casing is not going to mar its success. Plus, its other technical limitations don’t seem all that unbearable after all. In terms of stability, this phone has a handful of glitches, but they will be overlooked by most users. What we noticed is that much like the Nokia 5610, after an hour of music or so, occasionally the phone simply stopped playing tracks and we were down to reboot it. But tell us, do you know a whole lot of people who own this phone and would use it as a music player? I, for one, can come up only with a few names, and those are rather exceptions from the rule. Another issue occurred in the camera application a couple of times (though we couldn’t trigger the same bug manually), when we couldn’t take a shot. Other than that, we experienced no problems with the Arte’s core features – this means that 99% of the handset’s users will never spot a thing.

Now for the Arte’s price. The junior model goes for around 1000 Euro in Europe, while the Sapphire will retain a 150 Euro heftier price tag when it arrives in late February. Given the price point which the black Sirocco Edition retails at (700-800 Euro), both newcomers appear to be adequately priced, as they come packed with new feats and tricks (call rejection and other tap-based things) as well as technologies (decent display). For a top-of-the-line fashion-conscious solution this is a reasonable price – the Arte shouldn’t become widely adopted, since it is sort of the peak of the range. I shall repeat my words again – I strongly recommend buying the Sapphire Arte, it is better and spending extra 150 Euro shouldn’t be such a big deal.

As far as Russian sales go, the Arte retailed for 2000-3000 USD and was literally blown off the shelves back in December. These days, in February, its price tag has dropped down to the acceptable level, that is, 1700 USD will buy you a new certified Arte in Moscow, or you can pick a unit brought from Europe for 1500-1600 USD. With the price for the Nokia 8800 SE in mind (1200-1400 USD in Moscow), the brand-new Arte’s price tag is quite adequate and will remain sought-after (within its target audience of course; the Nokia 8800 SE Gold comes closest in terms of sales).

Another thing of note about the Arte and its pricing is Nokia’s premium service. Most European countries enjoy extended warranty for this phone (two years instead of one); furthermore in some authorized service hubs owners of the Arte are treated in a special fashion, being top-priority clients, who don’t have to wait in the queue and have their handsets repaired in less time. Nevertheless, despite Russia being the largest market for the entire Nokia 8800 family (we even got a special black edition of the original handset), in view of weak servicing system, there is no such option here. But as far as Europe is concerned, it is a very strong offering, since fashion aside, the maker needs to throw in more attributes of a luxurious thing. As things stand today, it is safe to say that the Nokia 8800 Sapphire Arte, is the last stage, after which the only option is Vertu.

A side-effect brought about by the release of a 1000-1150 Euro Nokia-branded phone is the pressure put on other manufacturers of “exclusive” solutions, and Mobiado in the first place. By building its handsets on Nokia’s solutions, packaging them in a different box and housing their hardware in all-metal casings, this vendor positioned its offerings slightly higher than the 8000-series – exactly for the 1000 Euro price bracket. With the arrival of the Arte, Mobiado will need to climb even higher, but the market for pricey phones designed by relatively unknown manufacturers is extremely small; thus the very existence of these brands will be questioned – they are in for a rude awakening.

Wrapping it all up, we would like to note that both iterations of the Nokia 8800 Arte have no competition whatsoever, meaning that they will get straight to their target audiences. I suppose it’s needless to say that Nokia never cuts prices for offerings of this class, and even if it does, changes are marginal. The fact that the price they charged for the Arte upon its release and today are so different is solely due to distributors who prefer squeezing as much as possible out of solutions like this.

SAR value for this model makes 0.39 W/kg.