Nokia 5800 Xpressmusic or otherwise known as the Tube is the first touch phone launched by Nokia. As the name has it, it's positioning itself as an entertainment phone and yes, it does.
Phone Hardware
1. Phone colour is chic in a fashionable way. But because it's plastic, it does not feel as sleek as the other high end nokia phones. Target segement is probably those who are looking for a cheap but good entertainment phone, specifically for music and video.
2. It has a 3.2" screen that is big enough for viewing and yet the phone has a nice size that is not too big to hold it even if the palm size is small. I believe Nokia deliberately designs the phone in a manner so that all the controls can be performed with one hand. Phone is otherwise known as the "Tube".
3. This is Nokia's answer to iPhone on a touch phone. However, it uses a resisitive touch screen to support both finger and stylus input, unlike the capacitive touch screen iPhone (refer to this wikipedia entry on the differences between the two touch screen technologies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touchscreen).
4. The downside to resistive screen is that you tend to have to use a little more force when you enter text using your fingers. *New update with thanks to Gogo's feedback (see comment)* Resisitive screen requires you to exert pressure on the screen when scrolling and it is not as intuitive as iPhone's multi-touch capability. On the iPhone, I can scroll down my long contact book very quickly by swiping my finger on the screen whereas on Nokia 5800 I tend to be slower because I need to press on the screen. What's good is that it provides the haptics that gives a vibration when you touch it.
5. When it comes to composing sms or email, it doesn't have the auto-correction function that iPhone has which makes virtual keyboard easy to use. For those who are used to having a Qwerty keyboard, this phone has a virtual mini-Qwerty and a full screen Qwerty. Else, you can choose to use the stylus for text input or to use their handwriting recognition with stylus.
6. Like any other Nokia phones, Nokia 5800 has a simple user interface that is intuitive – perhaps as good as iPhone (this is based on judgment that I don't need to read a manual to know how to use a phone and can use the phone without much frustration for the first time). However, for young children iPhone is still a notch up because everything is just a click on the home button to go back to the home screen to launch an application.
7. The phone has a 3.5mm jack and this is especially great and important if you want to position the phone for music and video. You can easily just connect it to a portable stereo speaker to play the music or to the TV to play the video.
8. The phone has very small internal storage – 81Mb but this is not a major concern because I can always choose to decide whether to save your downloads onto SD card. The expandable slot is using microSD – similar to X1 or G1 (see my earlier posts on X1 and G1)
9. The phone has built-in (supposedly surround sound stereo) speakers. Music experience is great if I compare amongst the phones I have used and tested. And it has built in equaliser into its music player – this gives the music buff the ability to change the settings or even create their own presets.
10. Battery life is very good. Probably because I don't surf as much using this phone. And the purpose of this phone is really not for web browsing. So for playing music, this is probably one of the phones that offers long battery life.
11. Nokia 5800 has the accelerometer-alike capability but it's not as smooth as iPhone in that it has a more discernible delay and it does not work in all apps. For example, its calculator will not auto-rotate when you flip the orientation.
12. The phone is really not for heavy web browsing. It's narrow screen is a challenge but X1 (with an equally narrow screen size) overcomes this by including Opera mobile 9.5. Nokia's own browser falls short in this aspect. I'll provide more details in the section on OS and Applications.
13. Last but not least 5800 has 3.2megapixals camera with Carl Zeiss. But if you let me have a choice, I prefer a higher megapixals camera phone say 5 or 8mp then a 3.2 with carl zeiss. Again, just my own preference.
Nokia 5800 OS and Applications
1. 5800 uses symbian S60 5th edition for its full touch phone. Generally Symbian seems to be a more efficient operating system than windows mobile. Opening a few applications concurrently does not have any visible delays in the processing speed or cause any frozen screens.
2. Because this the new edition symbian OS is rather new, many of the old applications need to be 'upgraded' to run on the S60 5th edition. I've tried downloading a few apps from Nokia Beta Labs but encountered the message that the app is not compatible with the phone.
3. 5800 has Mail For Exchange supported but Mail For Exchange (MFE) only synchronises the INBOX for mails although it does synchronise the calendar/tasks as well as contacts. What's good is that at the calendaring application, you can also have a view of the tasks to be done. MFE allows you to access the global address book but this cannot be accessed directly in SMS or Email. For global address book access, you have to open up the company directory application in the MFE folder. But I doubt people will buy the phone because of emails because if that's the case, one would choose the E-series for enterprise use if the user is a die-hard Nokia user. 5800 also supports the typical POP3 and IMAP account. MFA allows you to read emails but opening up attachments is a problem as it does not have the quick office application built in. You may have to buy separately.
4. Web-browsing. As mentioned earlier, this phone falls short in this aspect. It's not as smooth as iPhone where you can scroll /swipe up and down using the fingers. Plus the narrow screen size makes web browsing challenging. It does not use Opera mobile 9.5 unlike X1 and does not have the pinch and zoom capability on iPhone's safari. But I think in time to come Opera will release a browser that works on Symbian OS S60 5th edition.
5. The phone has a Instant Messaging (IM) application but setting it seems challenging to set it up. However you can always install third party IM application to get it going.
6. In terms of games, iPhone is a notch up with its big screen and its accelerometer function and with the huge repository of games in the iPhone Appstore. Don't think games will be a core value proposition for this phone. At least not for now. Nokia had dabbled in N-gage before but the results were mixed.
7. As mentioned earlier, the internal speakers are solid and the music player interface is easy to use. In fact, there is a choice of equaliser and the ability to use the song for contacts / ringtone. More versatile than iPhone. Not sure if this phone comes with free subscription to the "Comes with Music". If so, it will certainly attract people to this phone.
8. I tried to access the mobile music store through the phone. It is not yet ready. So no comment on this. Today, I can access iTunes (US) through iphone and preview the music. If I like it, I will then purchase it.
9. I'm pleasantly surprised that this phone can support podcasting and also import of OPML – news feeds. It's really an entertainment phone.
8. Similarly this phone plays video very well too. Definitely between G1 and Nokia, G1 video application needs a lot more improvement. In fact, it's video capture capability is better than X1.
9. It has a editing tools for photos – including basic ones like saturation, brightness, and the fun ones like adding a bubble talk.
10. 5800 has Nokia Maps. However, I feel that Google maps is more intuitive to use and navigate but I believe the voice enabled turn by turn navigation will certainly be an advantage provided that the price is right.
11. At this moment the applications for S60 5th edition will be limited but as far as I'm aware 5800 does have backward compatibility support for some applications.
12. Last but not least, Nokia certainly designs the phone to bring out its value in music and entertainment. Its one touch access to Music, Video, Web on the top right corner is very convenient.
13. Some other shortcuts – if you click on the clock, it brings you to the time / alarms settings. If you click on the top left corner of the screen where the email icon is, it brings you to your mailbox. At the centre bottom of the screen is a one click access to the dialer and the contact book. Simple interface but intuitive.
If you ask me whether I will buy this phone, the answer is yes if I want the phone for simple calling, texting and for music primarily and if the phone is priced at a lower end compared to iPhone. iPhone is more than music. I bought the iphone because it has reads email attachment the best (note – it's attachments not emails per se). In addition, iphone has excellent web surfing browser, fun games like SPORE and other many applications that I need such as colour palettes, Japanese flash cards, and of course the iTunes store where I download lots of podcasts.
Nonetheless, Nokia 5800 is very user friendly and if you have been a die-hard Nokia user, you will find this phone very easy to navigate. Plus if you don't relish the other features provided by the iPhone but simply want a phone that allows you to play music and songs with reasonable good quality (in fact, Nokia's built-in speakers transmit much better sound quality than iPhone's) and take better quality camera as well as video (which is missing in iPhone), then this Nokia 5800 is for you.
Let me know what you think?
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