After iPhone took the smartphone genre to a new level as a touchscreen device, the market just hasn’t been the same. Every competitor, both large and small, wants in on the action and Nokia is no different. Though it took the industry giant a while to release it, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic mobile phone is the first touchscreen to debut on the Symbian S50 platform.
On the surface, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic has a lot to offer. For instance, a 3.2-inch high-resolution screen featuring 640 x 360 pixels, HSDPA support, FM radio with RDS, A-GPS Support, Wi-Fi and a 3.2 megapixel camera just for starters. At a glance, Nokia has certainly prepared itself for smartphone combat with the release of the 5800. As for aesthetics, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic looks to be all screen on the front, which we like. It’s a bit thicker than the iPhone, but it makes up for that by being narrower than its arch rival, so it’s still small, sleek, stylish and fits pretty easily into the hand or pocket. At 3.2-inches, the screen is also a bit smaller than Apple’s best seller, but the quality of its images displayed are actually better than the iPhone’s!
The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic also differs from Apple, the LG Prada and other touchscreen competitors in that it employs resistive technology, meaning that an object, such as a stylus, must be used to make screen selections. There are a few exceptions to this, like when you’re viewing photos, as the XpressMusic does allow finger scrolling there, but this can be a bit of a pain for when you have to remember to use your finger or the stylus to navigate around.
A word of advice to anyone using the screen is not to rely on just touching it, but tap it instead. The screen isn’t overly sensitive and tapping it seems to work better. Another little bit of onscreen disappointment is the fact that function keys still have to be used for things like initiating a call with the send key or disconnecting one with the end key. There is also a key between these two for menu access. All three are featured on the phone’s front righthand side just beneath its touch screen.
As for its user interface and Symbian OS, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic offers three different homescreen options. There’s a standby screen with shortcuts, one with contacts and what Nokia calls Basic, which is really just a blank screen that lets you select your own theme. However nice we find these to be, we can’t help but notice that available shortcuts are lacking and, in general, it feels like a lot of very good screen went to waste with the 5800. Add this to the fact that the handset is mostly stylus controlled which will be a learning curve for many that aren’t use to using one.
The last straw is that there is no WLAN search available from the homescreen. And, to add insult to injury, selecting a sub-menu requires the user to make one press to select the item and another to confirm the action. These awkward decisions are not ones we’d expect on a Nokia touch screen and they really left us scratching our heads in amazement that they even went there. It seems like Nokia are still playing catch up, like they still are in many other areas.
We were relieved to find that the accelerometer rotates pretty quickly and smoothly as long as the transition effects are not on. However, if you are using text input to type in portrait mode, the only way to switch to landscape and a QWERTY keyboard is to manually activate that option from the menu. Little things like this will make you wonder if Nokia is really serious about the touchscreen competition, since they seem to have missed the point so drastically here. Of course they are, but there’s still alot of improving to be done.
One area where Nokia consistently scores high, and the 5800 XpressMusic is no different, is that the phonebook capacity is nearly endless. Adding as many contacts as you need, with multiple numbers for each of them is a real plus. Users will also be impressed to find that searching for contacts can be done with a finger flip or with text input. When using the latter, a rather unique keyboard appears onscreen to help out with only the remaining letters that are needed once the first letter of a name has been started. Though this doesn’t do much to boost its competitiveness on the touchscreen market, it’s new, it’s fast, kinda cool and we like it.
Web navigation is pretty good with Nokia’s browser and the high resolution offered is put to good use here, too. Zooming is similar to Safari on the iPhone with a double tap and a pan view is offered for viewing large sites.
The camera’s UI can’t quite compete with the Samsung Omnia, but it’s not half bad either. The most used icons are easily displayed onscreen, which makes for added convenience. However, we were far less impressed with the camera’s picture quality. Colours weren’t always actual and trying to capture images in low light conditions feels like a useless endeavour. Video recording was far better in a maximum res of 640 x 352 pixels and although the manufacturer touts 30fps, the count was actually closer to 60!
As a media device, the 5800 also scores high. After all, it is a music phone, so its multimedia capabilities are a must and Nokia hasn’t disappointed here. There is a sensor button just below the camera that is useful for video conversations. The same button pulls up icons for web browsing, the music player, video center and picture gallery. The speakers play loudly and the quality is pretty amazing. The headphones are also provide very good sound quality. Videos show rather nicely on the 3.2-inch screen and there are no serious lags to report.
Conclusion
Overall, we find that the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic has a few strong pluses, but just as many, if not more, minuses that leave it far from being any type of iPhone contender. To be fair, we’re probably better off comparing the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic against the likes of the Google Android’s OS at this point, but we still have our fingers crossed that Nokia will get it right, eventually. From such a trusted brand, we expected far better, but hey, as a music phone it does the job and as long as you don’t compare it to an iPhone, and provided you like using a stylus, the Nokia XpressMusic ain’t a bad phone!
Networks: GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 & HSDPA 900 / 2100
Dimensions: 111 x 51.7 x 15.5 mm Weight 109gms
Display: TFT Resistive Touchscreen, 16M colors
Resolution: 360 x 640 pixels 3.2 inches
Device Input: touch
Internal Memory: 81MB, 128MB Ram (Expandable up to 16GB with microSD card slot)
Connectivity: GPRS, EDGE, HSCSD, 3G HSDPA 3.6 Mbps, Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP, v2.0 microUSB, Wi-Fi
Messaging: SMS, MMS, Email, IM
CPU: ARM 434 MHz processor
Operating System: Symbian OS v9.4 Series 60 rel. 5
Camera: 3.15 MP, 2048×1536 pixels, Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus, LED flash
Video Capture: VGA@30fps
Video Playback: RV, WMV, Mpeg4, 3GP
Video Call Camera: Yes
Audio: MP3, WMA, WAV, RA, AAC, M4A
Battery: Li-Ion 1500 mAh
- Stand by Time: Up to 400 hrs on 3G
- Talk Time: Up to 300 mins on 3G
Features: Proximity Sensor, Accelerometer Sensor, A-GPS support; Nokia Maps 2.0 Touch, Handwriting Recognition TV-out, Document Viewer for Word Excel PowerPoint & PDF, 3.5 mm audio jack, Stereo FM radio with RDS, Speakerphone with Stereo Speakers
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