Following on from Will’s post about the new Nokia 8800 Carbon Arte, I thought now would be a good time to sum up on my experiences to-date with the Nokia 8800 Black Arte (there is one other variant which is the Sapphire Arte, by the way).
I’ve now been using the device for about 2 weeks, and in that time have formed some opinions on it – headlines are below:
- Initial feelings on unboxing were actually a little bit flat – I’m not convinced the boxing has quite the luxury it should have, for what is currently Nokia’s most expensive model
- Peripherals are good, nay impressive – the headset is worth nearly £100 on it’s own, and the charger/stand is well-machined, and impressively weighty. Only disappointment was the case
- The device itself has a good design aesthetic – matching the look of a Mont Blanc Pen, and I would imagine, probably targeted at exactly the same market segment!
- The keyboard is potentially just a little too small for a man with large hands (!) – I struggle on text messages and menu-nav occasionally
- Battery is reasonable
- UI is quite minimalist, but then I like that – I’ve got a colour scheme up called “black”, which as you can probably guess, has very little on screen or visible
- Series40 in this device is reasonably quick – not lightning, but does what it does very competently
- PC Sync is really rather good indeed – contacts and calendar no problem – in fact, I daresay slightly better than Series60!
So overall, I am loving the first couple of weeks with the device – I got it as a voice + text device, hence my lack of headlines regarding the multimedia or other functions. There are all the usual suspects on board in that respect – including a 3.2MP camera, 1Gb of memory, and a media/music player, but I have been using this device with it’s minimalist intentions in mind.
I have some concerns about what will happen to it if it gets dropped (big scratches I should think), but I’ll right in another post about my attempts to handle this matter…..
Ben