Nokia 8600 Luna review: Cast in glass

Entertainment? Just an accessory

The Luna has an integrated MP3 player, but it's hardly an entertainment-driven device, given the mediocre headphones and scarce memory. It still gives you a couple of albums to enjoy yourself at times of boredom. Random mode and repeat are available, sound is adjustable through a few preset and two user-defined equalizers. An integrated FM radio comes handy once you've run out of stored tracks, but there's no RDS regrettably.

  
Multimedia features • music player • music player settings

The camera offers a maximum resolution of 1600 x 1200 pixels. When the camera turns on, the soft key shortcuts turn around to landscape mode. The Luna is held horizontally when taking pictures. There's a Zoom feature on the menu, but all you get is a detail in lower resolution. Other than a few white balance presets, there are six color effects available (normal, false colours, greyscale, sepia, negative, and solarise). The shutter sound is always there, even Silent mode won't turn it off. Video is captured in 176 x 144 or 128 x 96 resolution, only usable in mail or MMS. Picture quality is below average, too much noise and too pale colors. The camera fails when it comes to shooting text, and taking a quality picture is a tough job overall.

Camera viewfinder • setting options

Sample pictures:

Let down by text

   
No effect and with different color effects

Browsing stored pictures

Forget about the features

Luna is impossible to compare to regular handsets. There's a lot lacking in terms of functionality: memory card, Mass Storage mode, miniUSB, 3G support, high-quality camera. Quite a few downsides, but all those seem exactly the functions people likely to buy a Luna will usually overlook. There are plenty of lifestyle gadgets to do all those jobs.

And then, the Luna has some aspects worth praising: the perfect display, fast user interface and exquisite bodywork. The handset is beautifully crafted and probably very durable. After all, the Luna excels at what it will be most likely used for: calling, messaging, and getting noticed. No doubt about that last one.