Nokia 8800 Arte Series announced

Nokia just announced the Nokia 8800 Arte and the Nokia 8800 Sapphire Arte, the two variants of the new phone that comes as upgrade to the 8800 series. Although the Arte phones have two names, they are just variants of the same device and have identical design and functionality.

The Arte Series aren’t really anything special when it comes to specifications but still slightly improve on the previous 8800 Sirocco. They are still only tri-band GSM but support 3G, thanks to the single-band UMTS. The display is now with QVGA resolution,the camera is 3.2-megapixel with autofocus and there is 1GB of memory. Their key feature is the design, with high-class built-quality and materials.

In these phones, Nokia has shown a few new features, which doesn’t increase the functionality but help for the rather unique user experience: tapping twice on the phone housing (the steel below the display) will reveal analogue clock and turning the phone upside down will mute an incoming call.



While both the Arte and the Sapphire Arte have “high-end metal and glass composition” the latter also utilizes sapphire stone (as its name says) for the navigation key and leather accents. The standard Arte phone will be available before the year is over for $1460 (EUR 1000) while the Sapphire edition will cost $220 more (EUR 1150) and will be available in the beginning of the 2008. Keep in mind that as they are tri-band (900/1800/1900 MHz) GSM phones, in the US will be fully usable only in areas with 1900MHz coverage.

source: Nokia