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Nokia 5800 First Impressions

Magnus Nystedt | Dec 13, 2008 | Comments Comments

I played briefly today in a store with Nokia’s new 5800 XPressMusic phone. Now keep in mind it was only for perhaps five minutes so I can certainly not give a solid and definite conclusion about Nokia’s ”iPhone killer”, but I have a few reflections.

nokia5800xpressmusic_5In terms of design Nokia has done a good job, but it still has long ways to go to get up to Apple’s standards. The 5800 looks like a Nokia, with everything good and bad that brings. It feels good to hold and to me it felt suprisingly light.

The touch interface, although not bad at all, comes nowhere near to Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch interface. It’s not as responsive (perhaps there are settings I didn’t know about) and intuitive as Apple’s. And the biggest difference between the two is that Apple’s version is multi-touch (remember the pinch-movement to zoom?) and Nokia’s is single-touch.

As we reported previously Nokia has launched their Music Store for the UAE, thereby beating Apple, so getting music onto the 5800 should be easy enough. But wait, the Music Store doesn’t work with a Mac. The 5800 is apparently tightly integrated with Nokia’s Ovi online service. I have no experience of Ovi myself so I can’t really say whether that’s a good thing or not.

If you compare the specs, the 5800 is pretty impressive: Wi-Fi, A-GPS, 3G, 3.2MP (Carl-Zeiss lens), and 8GB microSD card. So at least on spec the 5800 beats the iPhone with a higher-resolution camera and exanpdable memory.

nokia5800xpressmusic_7

We hope to come back soon the the 5800 to give a thorough review of it, including how well, if at all, it works with a Mac. Obviously it doesn’t connect to iTunes but we want to see how it integrates in other ways.

Update: Over on Nokia’s page with iSync plugins there is so far nothing for the 5800. Perhaps it doesn’t need it or perhaps it will be there soon, I don’t know.

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  3. Nokia set to unveil “unique music experience”
  4. Nokia Launches Music Store for UAE, Mac Not Supported
  5. First look: Nokia X6 and Comes With Music

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  • @medopal: the S60 OS has been updated, but it's still quite similar. It is much faster though and nice to look at. (The UI is not as nice as the iPhone's.)
  • @medopal: I've been using the 5800 for about a week now. I did not use the stylus so far, so I'm starting to believe what Nokia is saying, that it is there to cover all preferences (It has 4 types of input methods available, 2 of them requires the stylus, but I'm fine with the big qwerty or the phone pad one).

    I rarely make any mistakes now (the scrolling is easy, you just pull your finger down on the side of the screen), maybe under 5%. I've used an iPhone 3G in July for a couple of weeks - my "comparison" is that it never be as smooth as with the iPhone for one reason: the screen is smaller, so all controls are a tiny bit smaller.

    The capacitive touchscreen (iPhone) gives you the illusion of smoothness and caressing. The resistive touchscreen (5800) needs to be pushed - even if not as hard as a button, but slightly. It is a different sensation, more like a button. (It even gives you a small feedback, so you feel you have pushed one.)
  • I made an Nokia 5800 iSync plugin: http://tnkgrl.wordpress.com/2008/12/15/nokia-58...

    Enjoy :)
  • What about the price?
  • AED1436 at Plug-ins. They only had that one display model, actual units for sale expected later this week.
  • medopal
    My only critic will be the touch screen. Since there is a stylus i directly "jump to conclusion" and expect the touch screen to be not responsive.

    One of my friends has the Samsung Omnia, ok on the hardware specs it blows away the iPhone, but the touch screen is so slow, and scrolling to find a contact was too hard (with a small scroll bar, and u should use the stylus)

    After a while of using any mobile (or even any device) i believe its how much fast and easy to use is what matters, hardware specs will not make a much difference after few weeks.

    BTW, does it use the same Symbian OS of the N-Series or they have had any major updates? Just wondering.
  • I can tell you the screen on the one I tried was not as responsive as an iPhone or iPod touch, but the Nokia uses a different technology to do the touch part. It's S60 OS, I'm guessing it's been pretty heavily added to or updated to support touch and other things.

    It's no competition to iPhone really but it will be the device many people go for instead of iPhone for many reasons. In our region iPhone is not sold, exhangeable battery, better camera, etc. And it is Nokia so we know they're likely to sell loads of these.
  • It does integrate with iTunes, iPhotos and contacts, calendar already.
    (Links to the synchroniser in the post below.)
    Also, the Nokia Ovi Suite for Mac will be soon released in beta.

    http://www.renegadefanboy.com/2008/11/nokia-con...

    Ciao,

    a happy Nokia + Mac user
  • Thanks Renegade Fanboy, will check that out.
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