Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

Nokia's first ever touchscreen S60 smartphone was officially revealed 2 weeks ago along with its Come With Music service. Is this finally the iPhone-killer?

The Specs

• 3.2-inch 16M touchscreen.
  
• 640 x 360 pixels resolution (16:9 display ratio).
  
• Symbian S60 5th edition OS 9.4 with touch input
  
• Quad band GSM / GPRS / EDGE: GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
  
• Dual band UMTS / HSDPA: UMTS 900 / 2100 or UMTS 850 / 1900 (Latin America and Brazil variant)
  
• Accelerometer for auto screen rotation.
  
• 3.2 MP AF Carl Zeiss lens, dual LED flash and geo-tagging support
  
• GPS with A-GPS function
  
• 3.5mm headphone/video-out jack
  
• Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP, USB 2.0 
  
• microSDHC card slot (up to 32 GB)
  
• 8GB microSDHC card included
  
• 111 x 51.7 x 15.5 mm, 109 g

Being a power user(I hate this term) geek, instead of fussing over eye candy UI, I'll get straight to what really matters - the hardware & the software.

5800 XpressMusic pwns iPhone

Being a music-oriented phone, the 5800 comes with a hot-swappable 8GB microSD, which can be expanded up to 32GB.

It has a 3.2MP camera with Carl Zeiss's Tessar lens & dual-LED flash. The LEDs are for using with the VGA video recording at 30fps.

Unlike the iPhone, the Nokia 5800 fortunately doesn't have only one button. You've got Green/Call, Menu & Red/End buttons on the front. Camera, keypad lock & volume rocker on the side.

& then there's the touch-sensitive Media Bar button next to the XpressMusic logo which activates a shortcut bar to the essential media functions - music, pictures, ovi share, video & web.

The 5800 has a huge 3.2-inch screen with a huge resolution of 640x360 aka nHD (not to be confused with m-HD rerips). In contrast the iPhone has a 480x320 resolution on a 3.5-inch screen. Since when has VGA been considered HD? Even HTC have been marketing their 800x480 latest offering as HTC Touch HD.

Where you have a big screen, you've got to have enough juice to power it. & Nokia added a massive 1320mAh battery that has pretty impressive ratings (according to Mobile-Review.com tests): - 8h talk time - 400h standby - 5h WiFi usage (upload only!) - 3.3h video playback (with stereo speakers) - 34h music playback!

There's the usual A-GPS, Bluetooth 2.0 & the Accelerometer. Add now a proximity sensor which prevents accidental touches & turns off the screen when calling.

Another option to not using the stylus is the plectrum (a small piece of plastic used to pluck guitar strings). While you'll obviously want to string some virtual guitar, the 5800 doesn't come with a Guitar Hero-like game... I can already predict that the stylus plectrum will be a massive success, since it's always there on the lanyard & will be more convenient than the recessed stylus for some quick tapping.

The Software

S60 Touch 5th Edition (OS 9.4) is not a brand new OS. It's just a touchscreen-optimized S60 3rd Edition with LIMITED backwards support for S60 v3 apps. Only 30% of S60 V3 apps have managed to work on the 5800, but there’s a compatibility mode for Java apps. Hope Nokia resolves this problem with future firmware updates. Btw why 5th Edition & not 4th Edition? Ever seen a Nokia phone starting with 4xxx? That's because in many parts of the world, the number 4 is considered as unlucky!

S60 5th Edition is like most touchscreen OSes - big icons & flashy animations. The default S60 Touch theme is quite good, but S60 can be heavily modified using themes & hacks, not only wallpapers.

  

One of the best functions of the 5800 is the different input options available. The T9 keypad, the Qwerty landscape keyboard, the mini-Qwerty keyboard & of course, hand-writing recognition.

Your phone is ringing... But since you don't want to smudge your screen with your greasy fingers, you've got to take out the stylus to tap the Silence button. Not with the Nokia 5800. With the 5800, just flip the phone over! The accelerometer in the Tube does more than just rotate your screen or stabilize your camera - Nokia added brand new sensor APIs to provide much greater sensor control (not just the accelerometer) to app developers. How about shaking your phone to end a call? Samir's nAlertMe app just does that for your all S60 V3s with accelerometers!

The 3.2MP camera on-board the 5800 can be used for casual shots & Nokia didn't disappoint by providing quite a number of optimization settings.

Comes With Music

Nokia's Come With Music service is a direct competitor to Apple's iTunes store. Unlike iTunes, which sells songs individually, Comes With Music is a subscription service with a one-time fee giving unlimited music downloads for one year. The one-time fee is usually bundled in the device's retail price, but Nokia have announced that there will be no additional costs on the 5800 unsubsidized price. Obviously the music is DRMed, but you can keep the tracks forever, play them on your PC & can be transferred to a new device.

The PRICE However the strongest selling point of the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is its price - 279 Euros - Rs 11,000!!! & that's at an unsubsidized (& obviously unlocked) price! (Retail selling price in Mauritius is around Rs 13,000) While this is one of the cheapest S60s sold by Nokia, it's definitely the cheapest touchscreen smartphone in the world. Compare that with the iPhone's unlocked price at Rs 25,000. & considering the specs, you can't even say it's a low-cost phone.

What's missing? Although it seems a perfect phone, there are some missing features I'd like to see in its high-end touchscreen Nseries version, which was inevitably confirmed this week by Nokia India’s Devinder Kishore (more on Engadget). & what's more interesting is that it would be announced this year!

- Applications Compatibility Remember the switch from S60V2 to S60V3? It was like going from Windows to Linux… with whole new set of apps that didn’t make the transition. Well, Nokia can’t keep changing OSes every 2-3 years… that would make all users switch to a more stable platform like Windows Mobile. When you’ll buy the 5800, you’ll find out that there are almost no apps to install? Instead of making developers make their apps S60 Fifth Edition-compatible, Nokia should instead work on making the OS itself compatible to previous S60 v3 apps – & that includes Java apps. Btw, don’t forget that in 2 years time, Symbian will go open-source… with probably a brand new OS. I hope that this time someone will make that new OS compatible with V1, V2 & V3 apps! That would be awesome coz currently there are many great apps that never went beyond S60V2….

- 5MP + Xenon-LED flash The N82, N85, N95 & N96 all have 5MP cameras, so that seems pretty obvious to add it but I'd also like a dual Xenon-LED flash. The Xenon for normal flash & the LED for video lighting. & in case you're wondering what's the difference between Xenon & LED, check out the difference between these photos (from AllAboutSymbian.com ultimate cameraphone review) taken by the N95 & N82 respectively.
 
- 16GB internal flash memory The 5800 has 128MB of RAM & 80MB of internal memory. Without the 8GB microSD, the 5800 is pretty much useless. That's why it should at least have 16GB of internal flash like the N96.

- True Haptic Feedbak When you touch the 5800's screen, it vibrates generally to show that it has registered an input. But that's not true haptic feedback - which gives the impression of really touching physical buttons because the phone screen vibrates only at the specific area of touch. (more here)

- AMOLED screen The N85's new AMOLED screen is a real stunner with those really vivid colours & real black! & bcoz it has no backlight, it uses 30% less energy! The photo below is of the default screensaver which is always on since there's no backlight to turn off!

But the only problem with AMOLED are their short lifetime - around 20,000 hours, which is only 2 years!

- Multi-touch For the time being, there's only one technology allowing multi-touch - capacitive surfaces like on the iPhone. The major caveat is that it works only by measuring the capacitance of your fingers, so it would need special styluses to work. Nevertheless, multi-touch isn't a necessity but you can bet Nokia is definitely working on it right now!

- USB Charging The N85 got it. So any future unannounced device from now on will definitely have it.

- FM Transmitter Is the FM transmitter, now becoming standard on the Nseries, really useful? Not really, coz when tested by Mobile-Review.com, it's range was found to be pretty limited (in the order of cm) & it picked up a lot of noise from the surroundings!

- Wimax Many phones in Japan & Korea are already being bundled with Wimax, while it's now that laptops are being sold with integrated Wimax. So Nokia could take a huge leap ahead by adding Wimax support in its next flagship device. Nomad on Nokias? LOL :P

The Verdict

After the ubiquitous N95, the cutting-edge N85, we now have the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, which is one of the most innovative devices ever. By selling the 5800 at only 279 Euros, Nokia have sent the whole mobile industry into turmoil. Touchscreens are just an alternate method of input, they do not necessarily need to be expensive. Combined with those mouth-watering specs, what we have here is probably one of the most affordable all-rounder. The only negative point is the crap new OS… but that problem should be solved in a few months. In short, the 5800 is what you can call the People's touchscreen phone…

More info:
Mobile-review.com – Review of 5800 & Review of S60 5th Edition.
AllAboutSymbian.com – Nokia 5800
Wiki – Nokia 5800
Engadget – Nokia 5800 Hands-on