iPhone Killer....No, Worthy Competitor....Yes (Nokia 5800 XpressMusic)

Member Name: NinjaBaz

Product:	Nokia 5800 XpressMusic
Date:	09/03/09 (178 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Stylish, Great Features, Cheaper than iPhone, Free on contract, Much more...

Disadvantages: Needs more apps, Average camera, Fingerprints and dust on screen

After sticking by my trusty Sony Ericsson K800i for the last 2 years, I decided I wanted a change. The K800i never let me down. It had a great 3.2mp camera, was user friendly and did everything I wanted it to do. I plumped for the new Nokia 5800 XpressMusic which had just been released in the UK in January 2009, with high hopes after reading a few user reviews elsewhere. After using the phone for the last 3 weeks I thought I'd give Dooyoo users my thoughts and opinions.

This was my first Nokia phone for several years after having 2 Sony Ericsson's and a Motorola previously. I was a little unsure at first, as my wife has had a few Nokia's now and I just struggled to get on with them, finding them difficult to navigate and lacking real style or features. This was also to be my first touch screen phone, and I was a little nervous as to how easy it would be to text using a touch system and of course worried as to how often I'd have to wipe fingerprints off the screen!

**Phone Design**

The phone itself is roughly 11cm in length, 5.2cm in width and about 1.5cm deep. It has a large usable touch screen interface which measures 7cm long by 4cm wide and is plenty big enough to view internet content and movies easily. There are also 3 slim buttons mounted underneath this screen. A green one on the left which is basically to proceed or accept a menu option, a white button in the middle which gives you access to the phone's main menu, and a red button on the right which is basically the opposite to the green button, ending a call or cancelling a menu etc.

The phone also has a thin 3mm band of colour, either red or blue depending on network, which runs continously along the left, right and bottom side of the phone. This is purely to break up the otherwise entire blackness of the phone and serves no functional purpose. On the top edge you will find the mini USB access flap, together with charger socket, headphone socket (3.5mm) and on/off button. The right hand edge has a volume up/down rocker button, a screen lock slider switch which self springs back into position and the camera button. The bottom edge has nothing, whilst the left hand edge is where your memory card (8gb Micro SDHC included) and sim card slots are. These are housed behind seperate hinged access doors which sit flush to the phone (You need good nails to lift the flap up!). Turning the phone over you'll find the 3.2mp camera near the top, and towards the bottom left hand side there is a neatly tucked away stylus should your fingers struggle with the touchscreen.

Overall, I like the phones' design with rounded corners and glossy appearance, it looks stylish, expensive and very different to any other Nokia there has been.

**Functions**

The phone comes with an 8gb memory card installed as standard, so can easily double up as an mp3/movie player, especially with an i-Phone beating screen resolution of 640x360. It has decent music software which supports MP3, AAC and WMA, has numerous sound settings such as an eight band graphic equaliser and the ability to import album art. It also has a version of RealPlayer installed which supports several movie formats such as MP4, WMV and AVI.

The phone also has a built in tilt sensor so the phone can be used either horizontally or vertically on most menu screens. This isn't as well implemented as the i-Phone's accelerometer, but does the job well enough. The Nokia 5800 has a wealth of connectivity functions including built in Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g), Assisted GPS (with included mapping software), 3G and bluetooth 2.0. Once setup correctly, the internet is quick and easy to access displaying good quality web pages. It could have been made more user friendly like the iPhone is but is still fairly simple after a quick play around. The phone has built in quick launch apps for Facebook, MySpace and BBC iPlayer. Others are being made all the time and so far I've downloaded Quick Office, Google Maps, Accu Weather, Adobe Reader and Fone Food.

The Camera spec is somewhat disappointing for a brand new phone, having only a 3.2mp sensor, but it does however have a Carl Zeiss lens. This is still a higher spec than the 2mp iPhone camera and has the added benefit of being capable of producing videos. Despite its poor spec in this area, it still performs well outdoors under natural lighting but struggles indoors due to its weak LED flash.

Other handy features include an FM Radio with several presets, handwriting recognition support (usable for text messages), surround sound stereo speakers and TV Out facility (includes required cable).

**General Use**

I've found the battery life to be excellent so far, especially considering the screen resolution and graphics intensive menus the phone has to run. I can go a few days (as I turn it off at night) without having to recharge and that's with average use of internet, texting and phone calls. I haven't tested over a prolonged period with music or movies so can't comment on battery life in that respect.

I also find the in-call sound quality to be more than adequate with this phone and certainly could not tell it apart from my previous 2 Sony Ericsson's. In fact, I don't think I've ever had any quibbles about in-call quality with any of my phones. Whilst I'm on the subject of call quality, another handy feature of the 5800 is it has a proximity sensor near to the earpiece at the top end of the handset. This detects when the phone is placed close to your ear and automatically locks the touchscreen, thus avoiding any unwanted button/screen presses. As soon as you remove your ear from the earpiece, the screen is then automatically unlocked. Clever!

The phone is user friendly and I got used to it within a couple of days which I was really impressed with. Texting is surprisingly quick and easy coming from a 'normal' phone, with a few different options available. You can write text using a full screen QWERTY keyboard (which I use, and find best in horizontal mode with plenty of room to press the correct letter with your finger), mini QWERTY (more suited to stylus input), handwriting mode (too slow to be really useful) and the usual alpha-numeric keypad found on 'normal' phones.

The touchscreen is responsive, but a small gripe is that it is unclear which screen selections require a single press or a double press, it seems fairly random but you soon get used to it. The phone also provides you with a very gentle vibration when the screen is pressed This is a nice touch that gives you re-assurance that your press has registered.

Another good feature is the abilty to put upto 4 of your contacts onto the front screen which gives you easy access to your most used friends or numbers. If you receive a text for example from one of these contacts, a blue star appears on that contacts' image which indicates the text is from them. When you press the contacts image, it brings up a list of all your recent activity with that person. Handy.

The front page also has on-screen touch buttons to gain quick access to your dial-pad and your contacts book, as well as a button which brings up a drop down menu containing quick launch buttons for the internet, music, pictures, movies and online sharing such as the Flickr appication. The front screen also gives access to your clock and alarms just by pressing the part of the screen that contains your clock, as well as the usual displays indicating network, battery level, date, signal strength and connectivity icons.

**Overall**

Very pleased with the Nokia 5800 which I received for free as part of a new contract. It is also available on Pay As You Go with prices ranging from £200-£250 depending on network.

There are a multitude of regular features not even mentioned yet, such as games, sound recorder, calendar, calculator and the rest of the usual stuff. The phone runs the Symbian S60 operating system so there will no doubt be a lot of support in the future for new applications and features. There is also a new firmware in the pipeline which simfree versions of the phone have already received. This is widely reported as having a positive impact on the speed of the phone, so will be looking forward to improving the phone further.

Summary: Can't afford an iPhone? Trust me, get this instead!

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