Nokia 5800 Xpress Music Review

Nokia jumped on to the touch screen bandwagon with Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. The phone got a new Symbian OS that was designed specifically for touch screen devices. Nokia hopes to takes on unrivalled Apple iPhone with the Nokia 5800 which is priced well below the revolutionary iPhone.

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic specifications :

• Dimensions : 111 x 51.7 x 15.5 mm
• Weight : 109 g
• Display : 3.2″ TFT touchscreen with 360 x 640 resolution
• Connectivity : GPRS, EDGE, 3G
• WLAN : WiFi 802.11 b/g
• Bluetooth : Yes, v2.0 with A2DP
• Camera : 3.2 Megapixel, Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus, flash
• GPS : Built-in with A-GPS functionality
• Card slot : microSD, upto 16GB
• Other features : Accelerometer, proximity sensor,
  handwriting recognition
• OS : Symbian OS v9.4, Series 60
• Approx. price : $420

The phone generated a lot of hype when it was first announced by Nokia. The euphoria of Nokia launching an iPhone rival brought the Nokia community to go gaga about it. Nokia has taken special care of the accessories that it bundles with the phone. 8GB memory card, TV-out cable and protective case are the accessories worth noting.

Display and User Interface

The dimensions of the phone are not too large and the thickness at 15.5 mm is just about fine. The length of the phone is rather large considering the 3.2″ display it has. The phone is comfortable to hold in the hand and has got a good grip. The back of the phone has a soft rubbery feel rather than the fingerprint prone glossy plastic. The Nokia 5800 has a subdued design but yet it looks elegant.

The 3.2″ display is recessed in to the body while the keys on are pretty similar to the ones found on Nokia N-series. The display has a resolution of 360 x 640 pixels which is better than Apple iPhone 3G. The better resolution clearly shows when viewing images combined with the richness in colors and great brightness and contrast. OLED displays although are much better in brightness and contrast but the 5800XM has the regular TFT screen. Sunlight visibility that has Nokia strong point does not hold true for 5800XM and the display is poorly visible in bright light.

The touchscreen used on the device is resistive rather than capacitive. This translates to applying extra pressure on the screen to accept input but it also means one can use stylus with the phone. The touchscreen has haptic feedback that has three adjustable modes of vibration. Nokia hasn’t bundled a stylus with the phone but surprisingly a plectrum! We certainly don’t see people preferring to use that thing over fingers.

Symabian 60 has been a great platform for years and the strength of Nokia phones for years now. Nokia has now brought the same platform to its first touchscreen phone with the interface optimised for touch input. Being the first iteration of touch optimised S60 interface, it does not seem as polished as some of the other touchscreen interfaces one can find. Nevertheless, the interface is quite usable and the goodness of Symbian 60 platform is still intact.  The main screen is a big letdown as it still has small icons and a lot of un-utilized has been left. The main menu also has only a single screen of shortcuts. Overall, the interface needs much improvement to be match the highly polished iPhone interface.

Music Player and Camera

The music player interface is pretty similar to the 3rd edition Symbian OS but it has been optimized for touch experience. It still has all the goodness of the Symbian OS music player with large number file format support and great sound quality. The music player can sort music by artists, genre, albums etc. Tracks can be added via PC suite or directly copy-pasting on to the device but that requires a library refresh. The audio quality sets the 5800XM at the top of the league with exceptional sound quality. It simply blows the competiton away and has set new benchmark for music phones.

The camera on the device has a 3.2 MP sensor with autofocus and flash. The interface has been completely changed but it isn’t exactly the best we have seen though. The screen reserves the right-side for touch sensitive controls leaving the rest as the viewfinder. The camera has many manual settings to tinker around with ranging from white balance, ISO, exposure compensation, contrast etc. Geo-tagging isn’t supported inspite on inbuilt GPS. The image quality is decent but we expected it to be much better. The camera is good enough if you snap pics once in a while. The camera can record videos as VGA resolution which is definitely a bonus.

Web Browser and Organiser

As with other components, the web browser is similar to S60 3rd ed. devices. But it too lacks proper touch optimisation that makes the browsing experience average. Zoom is controlled by taps on screen and panning is the only feature to support gestures. The back-end technology such as page rendering etc remains unchanged for the good as it was just about perfect for mobile devices. The browser has both Flash and Java support.

The organiser on the phone is top-notch. It has various time management features from settings tasks in calendar to setting up a multiple alarms. It comes with Mobile Office and PDF Viewer to view files on the move. Calculator,Voice recorder, unit converter are some of the other utilities. Organisers have matured enough on Nokia phones to please almost anyone and Nokia 5800XM is no exception and with the huge application library available for S60 there should never be a problem.

Pros :

• Great display
• Good accessory bundle
• Good GPS
• Nice music player

Cons :

• Average camera
• Poor sunlight visibility
• UI immature
• Web browsing needs improvement

Final Thoughts

The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is a good offering from Nokia but has quite a few week points it needs to work on. The display has always been Nokia’s strong point along with music player. Camera quality is average when it could certainly have been better. Touch optimisation is what the device lacks and is evident at lots of places such as the browser.  The price tag is the deal clincher for me and it is worth the price it comes at.

Rating : 4/5