The Nokia 5800 is the Finnish giant’s first bona-fide touch phone and while it may not be the Apple iPhone killer everyone was hoping for, it still has oodles of multimedia potential. In fact, this Symbian S60-powered music-centric smartie has some features that will make the Jesus Machine blush with embarrassment. Read our review to find out more.
Because the Nokia 5800 is more of an affordable mid-range handset, perhaps the iPhone’s comparisons are a bit harsh. But when Apple’s tickler is the benchmark for touch interface performance it’s difficult not to make those comparisons.
Placed next to the iPhone, the 5800 is a lot narrower, resembling one of Nokia’s current candybar Symbian smartphones both in design and build but with a 3.2-inch touchscreen grafted on. On the plus side it’s a lot more compact and at 109 grams heavy, very lightweight.
Unfortunately, the 5800 touch interface is an erratic customer, lacking the sensitivity and fluidity of its fruity rival. Even the odd taps sometimes fail to register and scrolling, especially through web pages, is a struggle unless you call upon the help of the stylus. That said its general performance is friendly enough.
The touchscreen may be thorny at times but the UI delivers some neat touches including a dedicated touch multimedia key, introducing a sliding panel of multimedia features like the music player, web browser and gallery while you can customize the homescreen with four of your favourite contacts.
The Nokia 5800 might just be Nokia best music phone yet with an integrated 3.5mm headphone jack to plug in your quality cans and a bundled 8GB microSD card to store around 2,000 averaged sized MP3 tracks. Its audio performance is also first rate, serving up a dynamic sound through the headphones and a loud, surprisingly distortion free noise over its built-in speakers. There’s also a direct link to Nokia’s Music Store to download tracks over-the-air.
But the 5800’s talent don’t end on the music front with high speeds connectivity covered by HSDPA and onboard Wi-Fi while the built-in GPS and Nokia Maps combo provides steady A to B navigation. Its iPhone-eclipsing autofocus-led 3.2-megapixel is also pretty decent, if lacking in strong detail but the smoothish VGA-quality video capture performance at 30fps is a major bonus at this level.
Verdict
Nokia has made a good fist of its debut touch phone but it still lacks the finesse of the iPhone and other leading smartphone ticklers. However, it’s still a great sounding mid-range music smartphone that has a lot to offer.
Best features
Great sounding music player
Top music player set
High speed connectivity options
Impressive video recording capabilities.
Not so good
Erratic touch UI
Web browser interface
Bland design
Check out our Nokia 5800 gallery:
Closest rivals
Nokia N96
Mobile music fans will dig this Symbian smartphone’s mammoth 16GB onboard memory to stockpile a wealth of tunes and its integrated 3.5mm jack to plug headphones straight in.
HTC Touch Diamond
This Windows Mobile powered touch phone has the multimedia chops to match its stylish design, including a 3.2megapixel camera, built-in GPS and 4GB of internal memory.
Sony Ericsson W980
Sony Ericsson’s flagship music phone is incredibly compact but still manages to feature the latest Walkman music player with dedicated touch controls and 8GB of storage.
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Another nice try that only throws in sharper relief the strength of the iPhone.
Keep ‘em comin’!