Nokia 8800 Arte review: Art of seduction

Connectivity: Good all-rounder

Connectivity is decently covered in Nokia 8800 Arte. The main focus here is USB and it is really seamless. Upon USB pairing you're prompted to select the connection mode. You can then alternate the modes by only a few keypresses. Moreover, Mass storage is available, allowing your phone's memory to be directly accessed from a computer.

The Bluetooth version is 2.0 and it supports the A2DP profile, which allows stereo wireless connection. The rest of the connectivity options include the network support - luckily Nokia 8800 Arte supports 3G for faster data transfers, as well as EDGE and GPRS.

The obvious absence here is the memory card slot, which is sometimes the most convenient way of transferring information, Wi-Fi and the Infrared port.

Web browsers: Opera Mini does the job

Nokia 8800 Arte has two Web browsers straight out-of-the-box. The well-known S40 integrated WAP browser, which also manages HTML pages, has no significant changes in functionality and is almost identical to the one used in the Nokia Luna. Font size modifications are available, as usual. When set to the smallest font, the display visualizes up to 11 text lines. Direct address entering is available too. The browsing experience with this application however is nowhere near the standard of Nokia smartphone browsers.

The built-in web browser

The browser faces serious competition from another brilliant application - the famous Opera Mini Java application. The latter is pre-installed and is definitely our first choice for browsing the web on Nokia 8800 Arte. Besides, Nokia seem to share this point of view as they have placed a shortcut to Opera Mini right in the Main menu, facilitating access to the browser. Opera Mini is by far the more intuitive application, fitting text better than the integrated browser. If only the screen was a little bigger web-surfing would have probably been absolutely great with the Arte. It is still on a decent level as it is.

The Opera mini web browser makes most pages look like on a desktop PC

Organizer: time-proven performance

The organizer of Nokia 8800 Arte has undergone very little changes when compared to the other S40 models. Not that it needs many, as it is handling time-management almost perfectly. Month, week, and day views are available for the calendar. The week can start on Monday, Sunday, or Saturday. There are also five types of events available for setting up: reminder, meeting, call, birthday and memo. Further, each type of event has its own unique fields like start and end time, type of alert with various advance intervals, daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly repetition.

The different calendar view modes and the events available for setting up

There is also a handy to-do manager that enables you to categorize you tasks in three priority levels. Tasks can be alerted of, as well as marked off once accomplished. They are easily synced with the calendar application. Text notes are available as well; their length limit is 3000 characters.

The to-do manager helps you organize your tasks better

"...Nokia 8800 Arte has also a cool feature utilizing the built-in sensor that shows the clock when you shake the phone twice. It also works upon tapping the keypad cover twice but this way isn't as smooth..."

The alarm clock is repeatable; it can be set to go off on any weekday and works even when the phone is switched off. A nice touch to it is the possibility to set the snooze time to any period you want.

Setting up an alarm on the Arte

Furthermore, there is a cool feature utilizing the built-in sensor that shows the clock when you shake the phone twice. It also works upon tapping the keypad cover twice but this way isn't as smooth. Check out the video showing how this feature actually works.

Clock pops up while shaking or tapping the Nokia 8800 Arte

The other organizing functions available include a voice recorder with a 60-minute length limit, stopwatch, countdown timer and a calculator. They are all easily operable and decently looking. This time however, the calculator offers two different versions - a basic application and a scientific version with more functions available. An elaborate loan calculator is also at the user's disposal.

Some more organizer applications from Nokia 8800 Arte - voice recorder, countdown timer and a stopwatch

The calculator offers simple and scientific modes, as well as loan calculation