One of the best phones Nokia has produced (Nokia 5800 XpressMusic)

Member Name: Degeneratemoo

Product:	Nokia 5800 XpressMusic
Date:	08/08/09 (64 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Touchscreen, intuitive

Disadvantages: Fat fingers stay away.. this phone isn't for you

Quick opinion : Best Phone Ever.

The Nokia 5800, the first full touch screen phone released by Nokia and widely cited as 'the iphone killer!'. Since its release the phone has had several firmware updates (something I think Nokia is great for, Samsung, for example, don't allow you to update their phones so you're stuck with the bugs unless you send it off!) and these updates have really improved the speed of the phone and the touchscreen capabilites.

I guess the most important aspect of any review should be, how well does the touchscreen work? I think it works brilliantly, it's responsive, gives feedback to touch via vibration and works. Sure, if you've got bigger fingers you're going to struggle, same as if you have long nails (something the iphone also struggles with) but with practice you really get as quick on this phone as you would on one with physical keys.

It runs the usual series 60 symbian software so it looks, feels and works like any of the N series of phones. All of the usual features are here but where this phone really excels is the internet! The phone comes with a built in stylus that slides into the side of the case, this is a great addition as without it the internet would be extremely difficult to use (it's not impossible but selecting small links with your fingers is naturally quite tricky). You get a full web brower and whilst it isn't as feature packed as IE on a computer, it access most webpages well.

Texting is also good, you get a choice of 4 different types of entry, normal keypad style buttons, a small QWERTY keyboard, a full size QWERTY keyboard (fills the screen) and handwriting recognition. The small QWERTY is only useable with the stylus, the full size on can be used by touch but you'll get the occasional miss-key. Again, with practice you do improve with both speed an accuracy, it doesn't take long to get into it.

The phone has full multimedia support like other S60 phones and has a built in 3.2 megapixel camera. Yes the megapixel could have been higher but camera phones are getting silly now (there's a 12MP one out now.. who on earth needs pictures at 12MP??). I don't think people really understand what the MP equates to in real terms (are they planning to blow the picture up to the size of a wall?), for the average user there's only so high they need to go before all that extra details is redundant.

Finally, this phone does both landscape and portrait, which is great when you're viewing pictures and webpages. Just turn the camera on it's side and the picture will automatically rotate to match, works really well and the transition speed has really been improved in newer firmwares.

Anyway, this phone is fantastic. My one came with an excellent case, audio cables etc however my fiancee's did come with either so she had to buy a case from ebay for £3.60.

Summary: Fantastic phone!

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