Nokia 8800 Carbon Arte
Discontinued 19th August 2008
The Nokia 8800 has always been a bit
of an oddball product ever since the original
8800 came out in 2005. Always expensive to
buy, the 8800 range has nonetheless been very desirable.
This latest edition of the 8800, the
Nokia 8800 Carbon Arte, is a slight upgrade
to the existing 8800
Arte comes with a useful memory upgrade, now featuring
4GB of internal memory. Other than that the main difference
is the material that the Carbon Arte is housed in, which
is carbon fibre (as you might find on an aircraft or
racing car, for example) and titanium.
If you're not familiar with just how
expensive the 8800 series phones are, then prepare yourself.
The Nokia 8800 Carbon Arte is priced at €1100 (around
£900 or $1600) before tax and subsidy. This is
a phone that will still be very expensive even
if you can get a carrier discount on it.
So,
let's say that you're looking at the Carbon Arte and
you are trying to justify spending all that money. Well,
the good points about phone include the fact that it
looks stunning, and not many other people will have
one. The sales package includes a matching Bluetooth
headset and desk stand plus a "story booklet"
to tell you about the Carbon Arte's design story. Underneath,
the 8800 Carbon Arte is a 3G phone with a multimedia
player, QVGA screen and a 3.2 megapixel camera.. so
unlike some other "premium" phones, the Carbon
Arte is actually quite useful as a communication device.
Custom ringtones and themes that change throughout the
day complement the design of the 8800 Carbon Arte to
make the whole experience very impressive. One nice
touch is that the Carbon Arte comes with a special coating
to help reduce fingerprints and smudges.
On the other hand.. well, €1100 is an
awful lot of money to spend on a phone with this sort
of pose value. It is twice as much as the upcoming Nokia
N96 which blows it out of the water in technical
terms. Why? Well, the tiny 2" screen on the 8800
Carbon Arte is much smaller than the 2.8" display
on the N96, the N96 has a much better camera and also
has HSPDA, WiFi, GPS, more memory, a microSD slot and
a TV tuner.. all running on the superior S60 smartphone
platform (the 8800 Arte is just an S40 phone like most
cheap consumer models).
Alternatively, if you want to spend
roughly the same money on something even more exclusive
than the 8800 Carbon Arte then the Samsung
Serenata really will amaze people.. if you can live
with it, that is.
|
Nokia
8800 Carbon Arte at a glance
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Available:
|
Q3
2008
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Network:
|
GSM
900 / 1800 / 1900 + UMTS
2100
|
Data:
|
GPRS
+ EDGE + UMTS (3G)
|
Screen:
|
240
x 320 pixels, 16m colours
|
Camera:
|
3.2
megapixels
|
Size:
|
Large
slider 109 x 46 x 15mm
/ 150 grams
|
Bluetooth:
|
Yes
|
Memory
card:
|
No
|
Infra-red:
|
No
|
Polyphonic:
|
Yes
|
Java:
|
Yes
|
GPS:
|
No
|
Battery
life:
|
2.75
hours talk / 12 days standby
(3G) 3.33 hours talk
/ 12 days standby (GSM)
|
|
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