Nokia 5800 Xpress Music

Prolific availability at UK launch indicates that the 5800 Xpress Music is something of an attention seeker. It is, after all, the first appearance of S60 5th edition, which, vitally, supports touch control. That might be enough to make you want to rush out and buy this handset, but hold your horses. I see this phone as a competent first attempt rather than an all out iPhone killer. Text entry is one of those all-important areas where the touch-based user interface has to be superb. If it works well then text messaging and emailing are easy. If not, they are frustrating. In this case, individual keys are small but not too small and there is a gentle vibrating response when you hit a key. One potential problem is that keys don't actually register till you lift your finger away from them, so there's no chance of really fast typing that can result in physical contact with two keys at once.

This may slow down the speedmongers. The Nokia 5800's screen locks out after a few seconds of non-use preventing accidental presses. To get things running again you have to slide the side mounted lock button. You'll either appreciate this or loathe it and I certainly found it more amenable than the more usual double front button press. This is a fat phone at 15.5mm, but otherwise typical at 111mm tall, 51.7mm wide and 109g in weight. The screen measures 3.2in diagonally and has a 640 x 360 pixel resolution. The accelerometer is one of the most responsive I've used and it works very well indeed. The button arrangement is pretty standard. Beneath the screen are Call, End and Menu keys. Both the SIM and microSD card slots sit on the left edge of the casing under protective flaps. The phone comes with an 8GB card which boosts its somewhat paltry 81MB of internal memory. Above the screen an Xpress Music touch-button brings up a ‘media bar' offering instant access to music, the picture gallery, online sharing, the video centre and web browser. It felt a bit pointless, to be frank, as all it does is double-up on functions available from the main menu. There are stereo speakers on board that turn out a reasonable volume and quality of music and the (sensibly) top-mounted 3.5mm headset jack is welcome. The phone supports TV-out via the 3.5mm connector, too, and you get the necessary cable. This is, as you'd expect, a 3G handset with download speeds of up to 3.6Mbps. There is Wi-Fi here too, and it is very easy to hop on and off networks. A-GPS is also present and Nokia Maps is built in. There is a front camera for two-way video-calling. The main camera captures stills at 3.2-megapixels through Carl Zeiss optics and has a dual LED flash and autofocus. Battery life is quoted at 8.8 hours talk and 406 hours on standby. I managed a couple of days between charges with an average use pattern but if you are heavy on the GPS, Wi-Fi or 3G you'll need to recharge more frequently.

Download User Guide for Nokia 5800 Xpress Music

Nokia 5800