So i have bought the Nokia 5800 Xpressmusic phone for 298 eur, and here's my first weekend review of the device.
Please be gentle
1. First impressions / Looks:
The box that the phone comes is nice to look at as it is black and has some fine graphics for the music wannabe.
My version had 90day test of the nokia maps, and it also have ?guitar hero?
The device is rather pleasant to look at, the red model that i have has red ?racing? stripe on its side and has red?ish black backside.
The other versions are grey/black and blue, and those have the same stripe and colored back cover as well. The device is the same and the only thing that changes between versions is the colors of the cover.
The 3,2 inch 640 x 360pixel screen is massive when comparing to the size of the device, and unlike the Iphone / Itachi
, the phone has a stylys that is the main source of using the touchscreen.
The screen can be used with your finger as well, but the lack of precision of the screen when using finger or fingernail is low, but it is usable for answering the phone or changing song/vid.
Word of warning, the screen is really ?fingerprint magnet? as it get all of the grease and other dirt from the environment it is in.
The phone isn?t heavy (but that is decided by the user) for my point of view and i tried the E63/E71 for comparison but they felt heavier than 5800. And the 5800 is only slightly larger than my older Nokia 6021 as shown below.
2. Battery life:
Nokia claims that the phone has 406 hours (gsm) 400 hours (wcdma) of standby and 8 hours (gsm) / 5.5 hours (wcdma) usage.
As i have played with my new (toy) phone, i have used it as much as i can for the past few days.
So my battery life has been 20hours of usage with wlan, internet, gps, camera ?
I estimate that when the novelty of new toy wears off, I?ll have something like 2-3 days of battery life from the device with my usage.
(My usage includes internet with wlan, textmessages, calls, listen music/watch video and maybe some pics.)
3. Connections:
The Nokia 5800 Xpressmusic is blessed with connectivity:
- Wlan 802.11 b/g, that does work with WPA2 secured network.
- Quadband GSM
- Dualband ?3G? 3,6Mbit max speed
- Bluetooth
4. The Interface:
The interface is focused to playing music and videos and surfing the internet, as these functions have shortcuts that open from the top of the screen (there is a little button) and it opens a little drop down menu for music, pics?n?vids, online share, video-player and internet.
When user touches the screen, the phone vibrates as a respond for the command.
With that it is much nicer to use the device as it seems that sometimes it might not do nothing when I tried to do something.
From the menu it looks and operates nicely, but as opening programs some need double tap from the stylys as the phone doesn?t open programs with 1 tap.
The menu works both horizontal and vertical, and is changed by rotatin the phone.
Rotation works (even when you don?t want it to rotate the screen) by changing the orientation of the phone, and it for some odd reason work with the backround screen.
Normal menu, messages, videos, music-player and internet work with the rotation, and in my opinion the phone is better when its horizontal.
5. Games:
There were 3 games installed to the phone:
- Bounce, a game where you control a red ball down a slope with the stylys.
- RT GR, racing game where you steer with rotating the phone.
- Guitar Rock tour, Guitar hero that is controlled with touch
6. Internet usage:
Using the internet with nokia?s own browser is little difficult as first, but it has its moments.
The pages that I have tried have worked really well, they were loaded using wlan-connection.
The stylys is so much better when clicing a link as you can clic the link you want, without going thought the menu's.
(Better surfing is got, when the browser is set to fullscreen.)
The pages I tested were:
- Finalgear.com forums, loaded long time, but scaled very well withing the screen?s dimensions.
- Travian browser-game, really not so fast as a normal browser, but is usable as well when used the scrolling functions of the stylys.
- my schools webmail and other places, webmail didn?t work at all
, but the others work somewhat for being slow to load (but this is a phone not a laptop).
7. Youtube:
The phone had shortcut to youtube, and from the video I have uploaded to youtube:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hPWfL76Quo[/youtube]
As you can(?t) see the video is watchable and when it is loaded enough the vid can be made fullscreen.
8. Pictures:
Taking pictures with this phones 3.2Mpixel camera is fast and easy, but the pics show that they are phone and not a proper camera.
Some test images here:
Caution these pictures were taked when sun was shining straight to the camera/phone
First the Nokia 5800 Xpressmusic:
Then my Hp photosmart 935 5Mpixel digicam:
9. Music playback:
When music is played, the song is firstly decided from album?s list, all songs or other main different main decition.
When song is playing its album cover is shown, its name and length is under/on the right of the pic.
The playback can be controlled with remote that comes with the phone and from the screen, also there is ?stereo? speakers so that user doesn?t have to have ?earplugs? to hear the song.
The sound quality from the speakers is bad and is really for casual listening.
The player will remember what song you were listening before you were interrupted with a call etc
.
[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rixjk14ENaA[/YOUTUBE]
10. Video playback:
Playing videos with the phone is done with different application than listening music.
The application does its job for the playback, but it only knows .mp4 ?files that nokia?s own connectivity program can convert (with slow pace
).
The videos will play nicely (when converted to .mp4) and as a plus the videoplayer remembers where you were if you need to make a call between a videoplayback.
11. Does skype/pdf/works work?
- Skype does not have an application for this phone (only n8x0 and future N97), but downloadable Fring does skype.
With Fring I can send skype and other messages, make skype calls and even send files and pictures.
- pdf?s won?t work (with some ?hacking? they might) before Adobe gets its software up to date.
- Office will work with Quickoffice but it is not free application.
12. The ascessories:
The phone came with many accessories, and here?s the content of the box.
Viewing from left to right:
- The stand, where the phone could be placed horizontically for ?optimal? table viewing.
- Some sort of a guitar ?plectra?, so user doesn?t have to use the ?stylys?
- The remote control with 3,5mm plug for normal headphones. the remote is also the mic when it is used, and has buttons for call answer/end, volume, and playback controls.
- The video cable so the phone could be connected to tv with 3 rca plugs. (yes I have tested the cable, and it is quite usefull when you want to show off with 32? tv that has your phones screen.) The only thing is that the cable doesn?t allowe calls to be heard from the tv?s speakers, thought videos and music are heard from tv?s speakers.
- The protective case for the phone (very much needed as this protects the screen from any ?bad? things
- The nokia headphones, I didn?t test them might be good or really bad.
13. Conclusion:
As a phone, the Nokia 5800 Xpressmusic is new (but not the only one) touchscreen competitor for the Iphone, but lacks the Iphones Apple?ness, as the software for this Nokia is really hard to do even if the tools are free to download (comparing the massive user made programs for the Iphone).
For Nokia this phone isn?t the first attempt to a touchscreen market, but it still somewhat lacks better software (that said I upgraded the software, before I put my simcard to the phone, via the nokia connection manager), the stylys approach is intended for the ?business? market but as the phone is music intended it is marketed for ?cool Apple haters club? ?people.
The phone?s price of 298 euros is nearly 120 euros lower (420 euros) than when it came to market after Christmas 2008.
But for that price it?s nearly half of the price of its main rival Iphone (16G model is 519 euros in finland).
With that in mind the Nokia 5800 Xpressmusic is good value for money at 298 euros.
For a great phone, that is touch controlled, I like it a lot and I have found out that I?m faster at touch typing text messages than using the normal multifunction keys.
The best choice of the keys is full qwerty, as mini is too small to use even with the stylys and the numpad is slow.
For a phone I gave this 4/5 for being a new consept touch phone from nokia.
And a as multimedia player I gave it 3/5 for not playing divx-videos, and to have a bad management for a photos (it doesn?t show them in the media viewer from their folder, instead it shows them by name or when they were uploaded.
Overall rating is 3.5/5
I could (and will do) say that it is good for your money and is nearly good enough for videos.
14. extras:
Here is some vids that I took when I unpacked the phone
Ps. sorry that my digicam?s max recod is 2mins
Unboxing 1 of 2:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rGMKjkbnXo[/youtube]
Unboxing 2 of 2:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4N1u9YBlyt8[/youtube]
Comparing new vs. old:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwUJABKSxIU[/youtube]
This ends my review hope you like it and had the patience for reading it.