The Nokia 5800 Express Music is Nokia’s first foray into the touch screen market. Interestingly Nokia chose not to enter the market with its high end N-Series range. Instead Nokia chose its Express Music range. The Express Music range is designed for tech savvy young people with not that much cash to blow. The 5800 is retailing for around R4500 which, considering its features, offers excellent value for money.
The touch screen is not quite iPhone league, but it is certainly very good. Nokia, in order to differentiate themselves from the pack, have implemented some very cool haptics. Haptics is a feature whereby the phone vibrates very slightly when you select an option on the screen. This gives the screen tactile feedback, every time you touch something on the screen, it feels like you are pushing a button. The main benefit is it allows for confident fast typing.
On the topic of typing, and SMS’ing, when I first noticed how thin the 5800 is, I was worried that Nokia would try use a full querty keyboard as standard. While you can select a full querty keyboard in landscape or portrait mode, I didn’t find them really good, and preferred to use the preset alphanumeric keypad, like on a normal cell phone.
It is immediately apparent that Symbian – The developers of the 5800’s operating system – have put a lot of effort into their first touch screen operating system. Running on the 5800, Symbian S60 5th Edition is not perfect, but as a first attempt it is seriously good. After running one software update on the 5800, its performance improved dramatically. This is a sign of progress and that Symbian S60 has the potential to get even better.
To assist usability Symbian have incorporated some very cool new features. One of which allows you to choose from three home screens. (A home screen is the standby screen, the screen where you put the picture of your puppy or spouse) The coolest home screen displays your correspondence with five contacts, and gives you the option to quickly send an SMS, or call one of these five contacts. Cool and useful, I found myself using more than I expected.
The overall experience of the Symbian operating system on the 5800 is very polished. The menu system is well laid out, for touch navigation, and so are the sub-menus. The only aspect that I can honestly criticize, about the touch interface, is the calendar. While it does have a very useful feature whereby you hold down your finger on an event you want to edit and a small dropdown menu appears. The calendar does not look or feel any different to the regular Symbian calendar that appears on other Nokia devices. The problem is that the dates are too small to select with your fingers, and while it works well with the stylus or guitar pick, you should not be expected to switch to one of these just to use the calendar.
Oh the guitar pick. It’s a thin Nokia branded guitar pick that you can use in place of the stylus or your fingers. It hangs off a small removable lanyard on the side of the phone and it looks really cool. It also works surprisingly well and is in some cases easier to use on the relatively thin screen then your fingers.
The mobile is called the Express Music so I expected quite a bit in terms of the music player itself and the sound quality. My expectations were not met on either front. Its music software is not as intuitive as it should be nor is the sound quality mind blowing. A comparison to the best of the music phones, the iPhone, reveals that the Nokia is not as crisp, detailed and clear as the iPhone, nor is the bass as deep, and annoyingly, the Nokia does not go loud enough. What a lot of people tend to overlook with the iPhone is its prowess as an MP3 player. The Nokia’s sound quality is just not in the same league as the iPhone and in truth, it should be. Comparing the Nokia to other music phones like the Sony Ericsson Walkman range shows that the Nokia’s sound quality is more or less on par, but honestly why compete if you are not aiming for the top.
Even though the music side of the 5800 was a bit of a letdown it still is great multimedia phone. Its screen is crisp and the colours are bold, this makes it excellent for viewing photos and videos. A really cool feature on the 5800 is the media quick-button on the top right side of the phone. When pressed a little menu pops up that includes shortcuts to the music player, the wap browser, your photos and videos, and a share online feature which allows you to quickly upload photos and video to Flickr, Ovi (Nokia’s own social networking site) and vox. Why no Facebook and Myspace I don’t know but knowing Nokia they’ll be available soon.
Ignoring all the fancy touch stuff, the 5800 is just a great cell phone. It’s interface and touch screen is fast and easy to use when in a hurry, it has a enough features to fulfil the needs of even the most hardcore technophiles, the camera is more than good enough for happy-snapping and the build quality while not brilliant is easily on par with similarly priced cell phones. One feature that bowled me over about the 5800 is its outstanding battery life. Even using the music player extensively, SMS’ing like a maniac and making tons of calls, I still got a mind boggling four and a half days from its battery!
So seriously, if you are in the market for an superb cell phone with a bit of flair, then the Nokia 5800 should be top of your list.
Brendon Ambrose
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I am quite agreen with the write's says about the experiencial knowledge of better living.For home improvement I have glance those sits.I found they benifit for life. I want to buy something to home see for use. Hope you give me a good views
Hard to tell without seeing the device, but Nokia does have a plant in China.
I bought a Nokia XpressMusic 5800 here in the Philippines. Inside label says it is made in China. Is it imitation.
[...] Tech Human’s Brendon has been taking a close look at the 5800 XpressMusic. [...]