Monthly Archives: February 2009

It’s time to look in more details at the various features of the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and it would be fair to say that it is a bit of a mixed bag.

Camera

The 3.2MP camera is not the best I have seen from Nokia. Photos can be grainy, especially in low light, but in good lighting conditions it produces some very good snaps. Close-up mode is impressive and the onscreen controls are easy to understand and use.

Video recording is not too bad and the results looked quite good when played back on a TV, but again this could be better. It is a more than adequate camera set up, but it is easy to expect more from Nokia as has been evidenced by many other Nokia smartphones in recent times.

Music

Music playback quality is excellent, with the right headphones, and I would put it as equivalent to the BlackBerry Bold and Curve 8900 for clarity. At times the music can sound a little flat, but the loudness can be cranked up to a deafening level and the sound from the external speakers is way above almost any other phone on the market.

Video Playback

No problems here- BBD iPlayer displays well, although not quite as clearly as it does on the iPhone, and converted DVD movies are clear as crystal. As a portable video player the 5800 does very well and the larger than average screen obviously helps a lot.

Call Quality

The speakerphone is crisp and loud enough to cope with most environments such as driving and taking calls with a lot of background noise. It is typical Nokia and thus comparable to almost every other phone on the market.

GPS

GPS lock was near instant, but Nokia Maps is present. It works better on the 5800 than any other Symbian phone I have used, mainly due to the large screen, and Nokia Maps is growing on me. It still does not rival the standalone products, but step by step it is getting there and if Nokia continues to develop it there is great potential in this area.

Performance

I have read reports of the speed not being as fact as other models, but in my experience it felt snappy and easily able to cope with multiple open applications and more intensive use such as video playback and gaming. The internal memory could be more capacious, but the ability to expand external memory up to 16GB, and presumable 32GB very soon, is an advantage.

Screen

The screen quality is excellent indoors and not too bad in bright sunshine. It does suffer from some washout in very bright conditions, presumably because of the touch screen layer, but is perfectly usable in most conditions. The narrow width actually works and does not affect what can be seen on screen at any time- I was surprised to see such odd dimensions work so well and Nokia has done a good job implementing the system on this size of screen.

Battery

Impressive! After the first charge I used it for 2 hours over Wi-Fi (BBC iPlayer) and then played music for an hour while writing an article. The battery meter barely moved and I have still not charged it 2 days later. My use has been sporadic, but I am convinced that it will cope with the hardest of days without issue.

Compatibility

The S60 3rd Edition third party software market has never been as diverse as it could be, but over time applications and games have been released to gradually make it a resource worth tapping into. Even though the majority of S60 3rd Editions apps do work with the Nokia 5800 (S60 5th Edition), many have minor quirks present which mean that the experience is not so good. N-Gage compatibility is promised, but this could be many months away and thus there are not many games that work well on the 5800 at present.

I tested MobiPocket and got stuck after enabling full screen mode. There appears to be no way to get out of that mode at present and thus you are stuck in whatever book is currently loaded. StyleTap does not fair too well either and the main Palm OS screen occupies the top half with some issues concerning data input present and troublesome. Without doubt the porting process will kick in soon and we will see the number of S60 5th Edition titles grow, but at this moment some time will need to be set aside to ensure that you can cover all of your third party needs.

Data Input

Nokia has, until now, always opted for the traditional number keypad in its smartphones which the exception of the ‘E’ series and the touch screen implementation represents a huge departure for arguably the biggest smartphone company in the world. There is a huge advantage in applying a touch screen in that the overall screen size has been greatly increased, but does the data input side live up to expectations? No…

The virtual number pad which emulates the traditional hardware solution found on other Nokias works very well indeed and I found it as easy, if not easier, than a hardware solution, but the full sized QWERTY keyboard was tricky to say the least. Firstly, it dominates the screen activated and is then very difficult to use accurately, even with the physical feedback offered. The delete key is huge, with good reason, and the green tick to OK a selection is in the top left which is the worst position for it to be placed. The handwriting recognition, however, is very good and this quickly became my preferred method of data input. The entire implementation of data input needs some work and it takes some time to even understand how to activate it, but Nokia could fix this with software tweaks alone. Like the BlackBerry Storm, I am hoping to see a slew of updates appear to correct the current issues.

For the vast majority of people the data input set up will be sufficient for their needs, but power emailers and people who need to input lots of data in their phones may want to wait for updates to appear. All of that sounds negative, but the touch screen solution brings many advantages in other areas that would not have otherwise been possible so I can still look on it fondly and be grateful that it is here.

On Monday I will conclude my thoughts on the Nokia 5800, but need to consider it over the weekend first. This is a phone with some major plus points and some areas that need work, but I am leaning towards positive at this time…