Nokia Xpress Music 5800: previewing the iPod Touch killer
Nokia’s finally unveiled its Nokia Xpress Music 5800, the long awaited ‘Tube’ phone. The rumours were wrong: the Nokia 5800 isn’t an iPhone killer, but is targeted firmly at the music-buying masses.
This writer attended a private media preview of the Xpress Music 5800, getting some quality hands-on time with a prototype model.
The hands-on session with the device answered a particularly pressing question; why the Tube isn’t multi-touch. The decision was a conscious one by the Finnish phone-makers – they wanted to incorporate handwriting recognition, something multi-touch screens can’t support.
Handwriting? Why would a music-centric phone need it? You’ll have to understand that the phone isn’t just Nokia’s alternative to a Sony Ericsson Walkman phone. It’s something between a mobile internet device and an Apple iPod Touch, a multimedia-capable hybrid that supports both Wi-Fi and high-speed mobile broadband (HSDPA).
On the form factor side, the fairly compact phone has most of its front taken up by a 3.2 inch 16 million color LCD. Weighing less than 200 grams, the phone is remarkably lightweight and has only three buttons at the bottom with one shortcut button at the top right-hand corner, in the Xpress Music icon. Speakers are located right on the sides, along with a phone-lock slider.
A standard 3.5mm jack with headphones is placed right at the phone’s top. Turn the phone over, and under the phone’s back cover is perhaps the largest battery I’ve seen on a Nokia. The BL-5J battery will have a 1320 mAh capacity promising longer standby and talk times. On the storage front, the phone comes with 81MB internal memory but before you start grumbling, it comes with a whopping 8GB micro-SDHC card, with the capacity to support up to 16GB.
Now, despite it not being an iPhone alternative, the touchscreen is certainly impressive. The interface has one notably different standout feature where you can select four of your Contacts and display them on your ‘Home’ screen. Each contact will have a tabbed feed where you can see recent calls or text messages with them as well as two Web feeds per contact. The Web feeds idea is a nice touch, almost Facebook-like in the way you could keep a personal feed per contact. Only shame is the feature is limited to only four contacts.
Besides using fingers on the touchscreen, users can also choose to use either a stylus or an artfully attached plectrum. The stylus comes especially handy for the handwriting input, with recognition good enough so users can write as if on paper, without the need to learn shortcuts for particular symbols. Besides handwriting, Nokia also has a onscreen QWERTY keyboard, that can be shrunk to mini-size or expanded according to user preference. Support for Chinese characters is also something worked into the 5800, a feature that could prove popular in Asian markets with a Chinese population.
As befits an Xpress Music phone, the sound quality on the 5800 is comparable to the SE Walkman range. The speakers are very loud for a phone of its size, remarkable considering all you see of the speakers are slivers of metal about less than a quarter-inch wide. Movie playback is DVD-quality but video capturing is a different story altogether. The 5800 only comes with a 3.2 megapixel camera, which means it likely won’t be replacing your dedicated camera anytime soon.
With the strong featureset and compact size, the Xpress Music 5800 has the potential to be this quarter’s ‘It phone’. The biggest sweetener is the price, which will likely range around €290-350 (US$345-484). A price that will likely make it a more affordable, attractive option to the mid-range consumer. With the new Symbian S60 Fifth Edition SDK being released to developers at the same time at the 5800’s launch, there’s potential for a wide variety of touch-centric apps. If the new OS can live up to its promise, Nokia just might be able to stave off the Google Android onslaught for a long while yet.
Full specs for the Xpress Music 5800:
System:
1)WCDMA 2100/900,GSM 850/900/1800/1900,HSDPA, WLAN
2)GSM 850/900/1800/19003)WCDMA 850/1900, HSDPA, WLAN, GSM 850/900/1800/1900
User Interface:S60 5th Edition
Dimensions:111 x 51.7 x 15.5 mm (L x W x T)
Volume:83 cc
Weight:109 g
Display:3.2 inch nHD(640 x 360 pixels) with up to 16 million colors
Battery: Nokia Battery BL-5J,1320mAh Lion
Memory:81 MB internal memory, support for up to 16GB microSDmemory card
Camera Lens:Carl ZeissTessar™
Image capture:Up to 3.2 megapixels(2048 x 1536)
Video capture:nHD(640 x 360) at up to 30 fps
Flash:Dual-LED camera flash
Operating Times/Talk time: Up to 9 hours (GSM),5 hours (WCDMA)
Standby time: Up to 17 days (GSM),17 days (WCDMA)
Music playback:Up to 35 hours
Video playback:Up to 5 hours (Mpeg4) 3 hours (nHD)
Data Services & Connectivity:
EGPRS multislotclass 32, max download 296 kbps; upload 177 kbps•WLAN (IEEE 802.11 b/g)•MicroUSB, 3.5 mm AV connector•Bluetooth wireless technology 2.0 with A2DP stereo audio, AVRCP•Hi-Speed USB 2.0
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October 2nd, 2008
LOTS of Fluff.
To pricey.
Just awful.
Dud.
iJah420 says Nokia better start Thinking Different or they will be the next Wang. DOH!