The debut of the Nokia 8600 Luna for Live Premium category would seem to be a response to the consumers’ expectations, but in the end it is not all that simple. The 8600’s price tag is lighter than the Nokia 8800 SE by almost 250 Euro. Keep in mind, while cheaper it totally overwhelms the latter functionality-wise, sports more palm-friendly dimensions and so on. So what this price is all about? Very simple – this solution is slightly lower on the status ladder, that’s it, the Luna is a mere addition to the 8xxx line, rather than its flagship. Those feeling an urge to replace their Nokia 8800 with it, may go on and do that, but it would be a shame to shell out for Nokia 89xx Classic, or something in the near term. Within the range, the Luna finds its place below the Nokia 8800 Sirocco Edition, you should think of it in somewhat different way – this is also indicated, albeit indirectly, by missing unique ring tones, like those the Nokia 8800 and the Nokia 8800 Sirocco Edition show off. Well, then we are waiting for a phone which has already had these tunes created, and for now, let us break down the Nokia 8600 Luna.

Design, materials, casing

The stumbling block for the Nokia 8800 was its pathetic battery life, which was directly affected by the metal casing, since it took a lot of energy to beam a signal out of it. And struggling for more hours without changing materials was not possible, and that’s exactly why the Nokia 8600 utilizes glass finish. The bottom part of the slider is made of hardened glass, although at first you want to believe that it is stainless steel, which is so Nokia 8800. But when it starts ringing, you instantly see the keypad glowing underneath.

Figuring out how strong this glass actually is, doesn’t seem possible, as for that we might probably need a hammer, but thankfully, when dropped, the Nokia 8600 doesn’t let you down. So for, Motorola has been the only company to employ glass in its models, specifically in the Motorola KRZR. Though the difference lies in the fact that in Motorola’s solutions, this glass just covers the display and serves decorative purposes, but here it is a part of the casing, at that, a moving part. Though, technically it is the handset itself that moves, while the cover remains on its place.

Undoubtedly, we have to wait until the first reports of the Nokia 8600 users on the glass durability, but speaking of today, there are no negative prerequisites, so I guess it will do just fine.

The main chassis part is made of stainless steel, though with matte finish, which really doesn’t feel like this type of metal. It is some sort of powder that has been spread all over the surface, so that now it is a tad rough to the touch. This is an obvious difference from the soft touch finish, that has been all the rage lately; and the reason behind this coating is that they wanted to make the casing as smudge-resistant as possible. Indeed, the rear hardly picks up finger prints or grease from your hands, whereas the front fascia is a real magnet to for smudge, making you take out the velvet cloth, that comes boxed with the Luna, quite often.

At present there aren’t too many models out there that enjoy the same casing texture, the only thing that came across my mind was Mobiado Luminoso, where powder covers the aluminum casing. Curiously, these two models are technically share much, being based off the well-known Nokia 6233 and having nearly identical suites of features (let us put it this way – the Nokia 8600 is marginally better in terms of functionality).

The design elements of the Nokia 8600 are brilliant, styling it up and giving the phone even more shine, are the loudspeakers’ metal grills and the chrome-coated volume rocker. The build quality is not something we would ever complain about in the Nokia 8600 with its well-adjusted parts. In hands, it looks like a very solid bar.

As of today, it seems that Nokia 8600 will be available only in black – the glass here allows us to make a guess that there are certain problems with making up other color schemes, but if the manufacturer does find the way to bring them to the market, they are more likely to boast flashy colors and the status of unique offers. For example, look at the Motorola KRZR’s color, which looks the way we see it now all thanks to the glass finish.

If you want to make sure, that the casing is made of stainless steel, then there is only one way to do that – remove the battery cover. The locker is placed on the left spine, so having pressed it, you just move the lid down. Basically, everything will go fine even with the handset closed, but putting the cover into its place is possible only when the phone has been flicked open.

The 8600 measures up at 107x45x15.9 mm and tips the scales at 140 grams. Compare, the Nokia 8800 has the following dimensions and weight: 107x45x17.5 mm, 138 grams. Though even with that said, they don’t feel any different from each other, and you can drag them along in any desired fashion, be it a short pocket, trousers or bag.

What is more interesting is quite different size of the phones – slid open, the Nokia 8600 is about 0,5 cm shorter, which doesn’t hurt its usability, though. They managed to trim these millimeters off with the help of the dip on the sliding part, which the Nokia 8800 lacked. At that, while the display has improved over the predecessor, keypad ease-of-use hasn’t been sacrificed, as it is just the same as we remember it size-wise.

The slider mechanism works well, the halves slide with ease and at that assisted by the spring mechanism. Unlike the Nokia 8800, this one doesn’t product that metal click upon opening; it makes less noise when being zipped open.

Display and Camera

Luna's display is simply astonishing just like Nokia's 6300, as I have stated above. Still, this seems to be an organic screen which has a reduced power consumption – one of the reasons why it has a higher battery life than Sirocco's. I have tested and compared both handsets' displays (Nokia 8600 and 6300) and results were pretty much the same as you can see from the screenshots. The display is covered by a scratch resistant glass which simply protects the display from scratches. DO NOT try your hammer on the display, this is not a HAMMER-PROOF screen and will surely break if you madly hit it. Anyway the display's settings includes Power Saving Mode, Sleeping Mode, Standby Mode and even screensavers to amaze your friends or simply for your pleasure. The brightness of the screen enables 100% visibility in the sunshine, but this might be a nocturnal phone after all if we think about its name:) All in all, Nokia put in one of the best low power consumer displays included in one of its handsets.

The 2 Megapixel camera embedded in the handset is not the best, but also not the worse. In fact we should appreciate the fact that the phone even has a camera module, because the target of the handset is not renowned for taking pleasure in capturing pictures. Needless to say that it lacks flash or self-portrait mirror (what for?!) and that is only usable in good lighted areas. Still you can take decent pictures when you really need to capture something, but don't do it too often because you only have 128 MB storage space.

There are 6 available shooting resolutions ranging from 320 x 240 pixels and up to 1600 x 1200 pixels. Furthermore, the functionality of the camera is dropped even more by the lack of a dedicated camera button. You can definitely have access to the camera without the need to "wildly" search it in the Media category of the Main menu, but only if you push the upper part of the 5-way navigational key while the display is NOT set to Active standby.

The usual menu and functions are available for the camera, there's even a Night mode which is useless but it's there. "Clip shooting" lovers will be a little hurt to see that the camera can only capture movies in two very small resolutions: 128 x 96 pixels and 176 x 144 pixels. I can't talk about quality at this level, although this is not even necessary for people that will buy the phone. You can zoom the camera for a closer picture by pushing the left/right parts of the 5-way controller, but that will also change the resolution making it lower in quality and storage size.

Menu and Software

Nokia 8600 Luna features an S40 platform and has the same menu as many other phones in its class such as Nokia 8800 series or Nokia 6300. The menu is fully customizable starting with the display and ending with the interface.

Luna includes tons of wallpapers, screensavers, tones and ringtones, themes and graphics which can turn your phone's inside into a real jewel. There are also three applications which probably won't be used at all by the owners of phone: Converter II, Presenter and World clock.

Most likely the 4 Java compatible games included (Golf Tour, High Roller, Soccer 3D and Sudoku) will be used more than the above listed applications.

As soon as you power on your phone you will notice an icon-based menu on the screen. In fact this has four shortcuts fully customizable which make the 5-way navigational key of the phone very useful for easy access to different aspects and features of the phone (camera, contacts, calendar). This is a minor innovation recently introduced by Nokia and which is very nice and easy to use.

There's nothing more to say about it, just that you can only install Java compatible third-party applications, anything will just not work on this phone.

Communication

Well, well now why do I need 3G on Nokia's Luna? This is one of the main reasons people don't want to buy the phone besides the fact that it lacks a microSD slot (or any other kind of slot card). The answer is very simple, this is a fashion phone and owners of such a phone will not be interested in surfing the Internet, checking their emails or simply making data transfers. Moreover, this lack of 3G narrows the target of the phone eliminating those buyers that are expecting 3G tech from a 1,000 Euro mobile phone. Anyway, what does Nokia 8600 really has to offer in terms of communication? Well, there are class 10 GPRS and EDGE connectivities, Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR (supporting A2DP), HSCSD (57.6 kbit/s data transfer speeds) and microUSB for PC synchronization.

EDGE performances are mediocre as seen in the screenshots with data transfer speeds up to 116 kbps for download and 53 kbps for upload, but this is more than I really expected. Nokia tuned up the Bluetooth connectivity which was out of the charts. I managed to attain 132 KB/s (1,056 kbps) speeds which are better than most of the latest fashionistas phones. The microUSB port is very easy to use and the good part is that your battery will charge up while you synchronize it.

Multimedia

The handset comes with Nokia wired headset HS-47 but no Bluetooth headset like those found in Sirocco's package. You'll have the same problem with the volume of the phone – it's much too low. Whether it's during calls or music play even if you set the volume to the maximum you will have problems hearing or understanding anything when in traffic or crowded areas. Anyway, usually people that buy this phone will never go anywhere near a sub, bus and will most probably do their shopping in NOT so crowded shops or they will simply put somebody else to do it for them (?!).

I had a nice surprise when playing music on the external speakers; the sound is truly amazing. Loud enough and with no distortions but unfortunately with a total lack of bass. The same goes for the headsets, any kind of headsets as a matter fact. There's a small microUSB adapter that enables users to put in any kind of 2.5 mm jack port headphones if they're not thrilled about those included. The equalizer included makes some difference; the biggest one can be noticed when using the settings for Pop mode and Rock mode.

Furthermore, the integrated FM radio makes a very nice addition to the phone's multimedia features. It can save up to 20 stations and is very easy to handle. If you want to search automatically for any stations you only need to keep the "left" button pushed until it reaches a certain frequency. The reception is very good either outdoors or indoors, but again the volume is pretty low.

Battery

The handset makes use of a Li-Pol 900 mAh battery (BP-5M). The maker rates the battery life for 10 days of standby and 3,7 hours of talk time. Similar specifications were given to the Nokia 8800 SE, but then, in the real-life, the cell lasted only one day. However over there it was a 700 mAh battery.

Increased battery capacity, different materials used – all this has taken effect on the battery life, yet doesn’t make all the difference. The device lasts about 10 percent longer than the Nokia 8800 SE when put under the same load (calls, SMS-messages, etc). And if you remember that Nokia 8800 SE improved over the Nokia 8800 by about 10 percent as well, these figures will look pretty Also, don’t forget that the display found in the Nokia 8600 is substantially bigger than in the previous device.

USB, Bluetooth, other sockets

USB. The Nokia 8600 employs the microUSB slot, which is a bit slimmer and thus differs from the miniUSB we all have gotten used to. In the near future microUSB will become a standard solution for household appliances and the handsets in particular. Nokia also has plans for putting this socket into own devices in mind. Though, these days, it is quite a challenge to buy the microUSB cable from retailers, not to say next to impossible. Such cables are included into sales packages of some MP3 players, but that’s about it.

The vendor says that the handset supports USB 2.0, and it does indeed, in USB Mass Storage mode the connection via USB cable puts up medium data transfer speed which makes up about 500-600 Kb/s. This is slower than the Motorola RAZR2 V8, which also comes installed with microUSB-socket.

Upon successful connection you can pick one of the following modes: USB Mass Storage, PC Studio, or modem mode. Depending on what you have selected, the battery starts charging up. There is no support for MTP mode, music tracks have to be moved onto the phone manually.

Bluetooth. The handset comes with EDR-enabled Bluetooth 2.0. The following profiles are supported:
Dial-Up Networking Profile
Generic Access Profile
Generic Object Exchange Profile
Object Push Profile
Serial Port Profile
Handsfree Profile
Headset Profile
Synchronization Profile
Basic Image Profile
File Transfer Profile
HID (host) Profile
Stereo Advanced Audio Distribution Profile
Advanced Audio/Video Remote Conference Profile

The Bluetooth implementation is, as always though, nothing to complain about, we encountered no issues with handling this type of connections. The stereo-headset also works fine.

2.5 mm jack. I really don’t know where the conclusion on the 2,5 mm audio jack comes from, probably, from the headset specifications, which hasn’t changed its number, but its plug has morphed into microUSB. The 8600 houses only one socket for all connection types, no stand-alone slots for headphones are implemented.
Impressions

Conclusion 

It seems that the new Luna is becoming the new flagship of the luxurious 8xxx series. I cannot possibly think of it like it's low-end phone or that it doesn't worth buying it. On the contrary, I think that everyone once in a while wants to drive a Rolls Royce instead of a Porsche. This is not a powerful phone, but a good, solid one that will definitely guarantee you more exclusivity than most of the phones on the market. I mean you don't really want to walk on the streets near a 16 years old kid that uses the same phone as you do (and you're much much richer than him:). I was impressed by the look of the phone and I strongly recommend 8xxx series fans to try this one out .. it's SUPERB.

Plus Along with the 8800 Sirocco, the Luna is one of the finest-built handsets around with a supreme slider action.

Minus Limited memory hampers an otherwise great-sounding music player, while camera quality is average.