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As you would expect, the 8800 plays music and takes pictures. Bizarrely for such an expensive phone a wired headset is not supplied. And there is no support for a 3.5mm jack. All you have for wired sound output is that microUSB slot I already mentioned. Playback through the loudspeaker is quite loud. Unfortunately it also distorts at the higher volumes. On the other hand, battery life was good. I got 8 hours 50 minutes of music playback from a full charge.

The camera has auto focus and shoots at resolutions up to 3.2-megapixels. It has no flash or self-portrait mirror. Image quality was generally acceptable, but not as good as I'd expect from a mobile of this price.

The coloured dish, shot indoors under normal household lighting, is grainy, though the colours are reproduced quite faithfully. The white chair is again accurate on the colour front, but the detail is not wonderful with some noticeable lens distortion at the edges. The flowers show how the camera functions for closer shots. Not too hot, in my opinion, with the autofocus missing the main subject of the composition.

Verdict

For all of Nokia's efforts to brand the Arte and Arte Sapphire as high class mobiles there simply isn't enough here to justify the price. Distortion from the loudspeaker, a below par camera, no front camera for two-way video calls, and the S40 OS with its reasonable but not wonderful set of features are not top-notch specifications.

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