Nokia 8800 Arte and Sapphire Arte handsets

Aimed squarely at the money-is-no-object mobile buyer

Outdoors this is fine, with some accurately coloured and decently rendered images. Indoors, in poor light, the lack of a flash dampens its performance, with increased picture noise evident making for grainier images.

The autofocus system does a good job – you can hold the capture button (the navi-key) down to lock on to a subject and release it to take the pic, allowing a bit of flexibility with the auto metering system. As usual, a bit of practice will get you better results.

We found ourselves reaching for the desktop charger after two days with moderate usage

At this price level, you have to be critical though; the camera is lacking in the low-light shooting and doesn’t have the sophistication or control of Nokia’s higher-end smartphone models like the multi-megapixel-packing N82 or N95.

With no dedicated camera buttons, the default mode for taking snaps is in portrait mode, though you can switch to landscape in the sub menu. You get a few setting adjustment options too - white balance, brightness, night mode – plus effects, a self timer (though there’s no mirror to frame self portraits), and multi-shot options. You can also change imaging quality settings, with six image size options up to the maximum 2048 x 1536 pixels level.

Video capture quality is good for a mobile phone, delivering VGA quality (640 x 480 pixels) top resolution recording at 15 frames per second, but it's not as smooth as the top shooters.

Most other features included on the 8800 Arte and Arte Sapphire are mostly standard issue for Nokia’s current crop of Series 40 handsets, such as the 6500 Classic and 6500 Slide, and 5610 XpressMusic device – all significantly cheaper models.