Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is a long awaited phone with extraordinary specifications and generous retail package.
Introduction:
Nokia 5800 XpressMusic features a 3.2 inch TFT LCD touch-screen working in high resolution and with bright colors, proximity sensor for automatic turn off, office document viewer, some built in memory and an 8 GB memory card in the box
Nokia 5800 XpressMusic pros:
+ 3.2 megapixel autofocus camera with dual-LED flash
+ 3.2″ 16M-color TFT LCD 16:9 touchscreen display
+ Symbian S60 5th edition
+ ARM 11 369 MHz CPU, 128 MB of SDRAM memory
+ Excellent connectivity
+ Capable GPS receiver and Nokia Maps 2.0 Touch
+ VGA video recording at 30fps
+ Excellent audio quality
+ Landscape on-screen virtual QWERTY keyboard
+ 8 GB memory card in the box
Nokia 5800 XpressMusic cons:
- No smart dialing
- No voice-guided navigation license
- Poor image quality and no GPS geotagging
- No office document editing out-of-the-box
- Touch web browser could be better
The design:
Nokia 5800 XpressMusic measures 11.1 x 51.7 x 15.5 mm and weighs 109 grams. The phone is made of high quality materials which both shows and feels. The front of the phone is dominated by the 3.2 inch touchscreen display below which you will find three hard keys: Call, Menu and End. Above the display is the video call camera along with the earpiece. At the top of the phone is the Power button, whereas at the bottom is the standard 3.5 audio jack together with the charger plug and the microUSB port. The left side of Nokia 5800 XpressMusic houses the SIM compartment and the microSD memory card slot. The stereo speakers are also to be found here. The right side of Nokia 5800 XpressMusic features the dedicated camera key, the screen-lock switch and the volume rocker. At the back of the phone is the 3 megapixel camera lens which comes with a dual LED flash and the stylus which slides into the back panel.
Performance:
The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic has quite good battery life. The manufacturer claims it should suffice for over 400 hours of standby and almost 9 hours of talk time. Of course if you decide to surf the web, browse documents, or listening to music it will be much less, nevertheless, the numbers are impressive. The touchscreen in Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is of very high quality and may be compared to the Apple iPhone. The 3.2” display works in 360 x 640 pixels resolution, has great contrast and brightness, but unfortunately not the best direct sunlight legibility. When you press the touchscreen a nice vibration will confirm that the command has been accepted and you can even adjust the vibration level.
The music player in Nokia 5800 XpressMusic automatically sorts music by artist, album, genre and you can search tracks by gradual typing – a feature missing in Nokia 8800 Gold Arte. There are five equalizer presets and you can, of course, create new ones in just a few seconds. The sound quality in Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is truly outstanding. It is not only good for a mobile phone but can be compared with dedicated music players and it is simply (one of) the best among cell phones. The video player is okay, but unfortunately, it does not support divx/xvid out of the box.
The phone comes with a mobile office document viewer, but unfortunately, not editor, so you can only read Word, Excel, Powerpoint and PDF files. Other useful Nokia 5800 XpressMusic features include the organizer, stopwatch, notes application, unit converter, calculator. The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic has also some interesting features like voice dialing, or silencing an incoming call which can be done simply by turning the phone upside down.
Image quality:
The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic comes with a 3.15 megapixel camera with the maximum image resolution of 2048 x 1536. Although the phone has Carl Zeiss optics and dual-LED flash the image quality disappoints. You get quite a lot manual settings like sharpness, white balance and ISO, but, to put it mildly, the image quality the you can achieve with Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is only average.
The phone can also record videos in VGA resolution at 30 frames per second. You also get some manual settings here, and I think that in general the video capabilities are better that still image Nokia 5800 XpressMusic functionality.
Menus / ease of use:
The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic runs on Symbian S60 so it is no surprise that is it easy and fun to use. Moreover, it is very customizable and with plenty of add-on in the Internet. The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic has three different layouts of homescreen to which you can still add your own shortcuts to the most frequently used applications. There are some discrepancies in the menus in that sometimes you have to press an icon only once to run an application and sometimes twice. It is not a big deal but you have to get used to that. The entire interface of the phone is very intuitive and pleasant to work with, besides you can always download some new themes or graphics. As with the majority of the latest touchscreen cell phones when you turn the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic into the landscape mode you can use a full QWERTY keyboard, however, unlike in other devices you have to switch the keyboard manually. It seems unnecessary as the phone is equipped with accelerometer and this could be done automatically, just like in the apple iPhone, or Samsung Omnia.
All in all, if taking photos is not at the top of your list and you are looking for a serious touchscreen phone Nokia 5800 XpressMusic might be perfect for you.
Selected Nokia 5800 XpressMusic features and specifications:
Display and 3D
• Main display
- Size: 3.2″
- Resolution: 640 x 360 pixels (nHD)
- Up to 16 million colors
- aspect ratio 16:9
- automatic orientation sensor (Accelerometer) for display rotation
• 3D image engine
Keys and input method
• Stylus, plectrum and finger touch support for text input and user interface control (alphanumeric keypad, full and mini qwerty keyboard, handwriting recognition
• Dedicated Media Bar touch key for access to music, gallery, share on-line, Video Center and web browser
• Voice commands
• Physical keys for application launch key (menu key), send & end, power, camera, lock, volume up & down
Colors and covers
• Available in-box colors:
- Black
Available colors may vary by country.
Connectors
• Micro-USB connector, USB 2.0 High Speed
• 3.5 mm Nokia AV connector
• MicroSD card slot, small DC jack, Micro USB cable interface to PC (CA-101), TV out interface (CA-75U)
Power
• BL-5J 1320 mAh Li-Ion battery
• Talk time (maximum):
- GSM up to 8.8 hr
- WCDMA up to 5 hr
• Standby time (maximum):
- GSM up to 16.75 days
- WCDMA up to 16.7 days
• Browsing time with packet data (maximum): up to 3.4 hr
• Video playback time (maximum): up to 5.2 hr, Video playback time (maximum, nHD/Mpeg4)up to 3.4 hr, VGA video playback using TV-Out with Stereo BT Headset up to 3.8 hr
• Video recording time (maximum): up to 3.6 hr
• Video call time (maximum):up to 3 hr
• Music playback time (maximum): up to 1.5 days
• Gaming time (maximum): up to 5.6 hr
Other recently reviewed mobile phones:
Samsung L700, Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1, Sony Ericsson G705, LG KC 910 Renoir, Nokia E63.