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Having tried a couple of other smart phones of late, and not been too impressed, I’m glad to report the Nokia 5800 is a pretty funky device. Don’t let the emphasis on “Xpressmusic” put you off – it’s a good all-rounder, not just aimed at music listeners.

Physically the device features a touch-screen, but also has three buttons on the front – call, hang-up, and a multi-task button. On the side there’s a shutter button for the camera, a sliding button to lock/unlock the phone, and volume up/down buttons. On the top is the power button, charger socket, headphone socket (of the standard variety) and USB socket. Underneath the phone is slightly rubberised, making it less likely to slip out of your hand. And a stylus is stored within the phone case. Overall, it’s well built but does feel slightly plasticky. I would suggest buying some form of case, and definitely some screen protectors.

The phone is very well spec’ed – 3G, touch screen, GPS, WiFi. There are various ways of entering text – full screen QWERTY, mini QWERTY, alphanumeric keypad, and handwriting recognition. The handwriting recognition works, but it’s quicker using the other methods. Predictive text is available when using the alphanumeric keypad, making input swift with your fingers. The mini QWERTY keyboard is small, making it almost impossible to type using your fingers – but the stylus works ok.

Setting the phone up to use email accounts is easy. And you can specify how often to check for new emails, and between which hours – so checking between 7am and 10pm means you won’t get woken up in the middle of the night!

Browsing the internet works really well. Sites that have dedicated mobile versions work best (because they’ll fit into a smaller screen and be quicker due to less graphics) but it does cope with ‘normal’ sites too.

The phone comes with Nokia Maps, which is really cool. It uses A-GPS so works out your position quickly, and works well indoors too! I haven’t tried using Nokia Maps as a ‘sat nav’ but apparently you can tell it where to go and you’ll get directions of some sort.

There is an in-built chat client, but I couldn’t get this to work – so I installed a free 3rd party application (Fring) which means I can use MSN and Skype.

Overall I’m really impressed with this phone – it does everything I want it to. The touch screen is very responsive, and over-all operation of the phone is quick and easy. I do have issues with it – the battery only lasts a couple of days, you can’t charge via USB, and the case being plasticky, but these are minor complaints – this phone will put a smile on your face

UPDATE: I’ve had this phone a few months now, and am still extremely pleased with it. Nokia have added an app store application, so downloading free / paid for applications and games is much easier. I’ve bought a silicone phone protector, and although I’m not overly impressed with the plasicky feel of the phone, with the protector it shows no sign of wear. I’ve downloaded a good msn chat application called Nimbuzz, which is free. As stated before, battery life is only a couple of days with normal use. Now summer is here I’ve noticed the screen can be difficult to read in bright light. But it’s still a great phone, and extremely good value for money.
Rating: 5 / 5

This is my first Nokia phone, but not my first touchscreen, and it has really impressed me. Firstly, a lot of the negatives in the first few reviews seem to be about touch phones in general – there are things to get used to with the transition to touch. One thing I can say, compared with my old LG Viewty, this is a vast improvement in technology. One thing to note is that many of the reviews online are of the phone with it’s original firmware – further updates have improved the functionality and responsiveness of the touchscreen. When I installed it, I couldn’t believe the difference.

UPDATE –

6 months after getting the phone, I’ve decided to update the review. It’s still a great phone, but the touch screen has gradually lost some of it’s responsiveness. This is due to it being a resistive touchscreeen (rather than capacitive, like the iPhone), and leaves it more susceptable to wear and tear. The main areas affected are the two button areas at the bottom of the screen, and the direct middle. The cause of it is most likely a combo of me not keeping it in a case and using fingernail taps that are maybe a bit too hard. I would reccommend treating the screen with care. That said, it responds perfectly fine to fingernail taps rather than full finger presses. (all other points of the review still stand, battery life still excellent etc.)

HARDWARE –

The phone is a very well built object, but the back casing and stylus do seem a bit flimsy when removed. The screen is very nice, responsive and sharp, although I find myself using fingernail taps for texting rather than full finger presses. I have never used the stylus, or felt the need, but I have small fingers. The camera is a bit rubbish, but then so was the one on my old LG (with all it’s 5MP) compared with my dedicated camera. The phone has a 3.5mm headphone jack, which is great. For a touch phone, I have to say the battery life is amazing, so thumbs up there.

SOFTWARE –

The phone software is an updated Symbian smartphone OS, which looks a little dull to begin with. However, the beauty of Symbian is that it can be updated and changed to look however you want – my favourite is the iPhone theme by Pizero – which suits the fun loving music demographic that this phone is aimed at. The music player is very good, automatically finding any music you drag and drop onto the card supplied. Several touchscreen features are worthy of note: the accelerometer that switches the screen landscape to portrait, the scrollbar (much easier than the weird scrolling on the LG), and the nice big full-screen QWERTY keyboard. It’s worth noting that some actions require 2 taps, specifically selecting items from the menus, whereas all other actions only require on press.

FEATURES –

The camera, as I said, is a bit pants – but that isn’t why you would buy this phone. The supplied games are also a bit rubbish, but there are free downloadable ones on Nokia’s website. The internet browser is great, very sharp and fast, but beware of double-tapping, this only zooms the page in. GPS seems to work well too – but requires an internet connection for some reason, so make sure you have a contract including browsing. And although it comes with NokiaMaps, this is only a demo – go and download Googlemaps for free. The music player is top notch – but doesn’t feature Nokia’s “Comes with Music” software. Video playback is awesome on the big screen, and BBC iPlayer plays very well bar its usual pixellation issues. All in all, a great package of features.

COMES WITH… -

The phone comes with a great package of extra bits, a stand for viewing video, a TV-out cable to watch iPlayer and self-shot video over the TV, headphones, in-line remote, charger, spare stylus and a weird plectrum stylus. Bizarrely, although 2 of these items have an attaching cord, there seems to be no hole to thread them through anywhere on the phone. The included 8gb card is very generous, and can be expanded to 16gb is Nokia is to be believed, and 32gb if Wikipedia is to be believed.

CONCLUSION –

I like this phone, the touch controls work well (once the multiple presses have been adjusted for), and it’s very easy to use. Some more customisation on the home screen would have been nice, but it does the job. The review that lamented the lack of a “Back” button should note that there is always an “Options” and “Back” button at the bottom of the screen, not sure how they missed that. Anyway, after a week, I’m very happy with this phone. It’s not an iPhone, but it was less than half the price on a better contract.
Rating: 5 / 5

So, I wanted a phone that does everything and I like Nokia. The choice was made easy for me having seen this Nokia 5800 mobile ‘phone’ in action. Of course the iphone looks and feels gorgeous and this 5800 just looks boring. BUT, it really grows on you. The 3.2mp camera is very good, the sound quality for playing music is excellent (even without headphones. 3.5mm headphone jack is a great idea), it picks-up every radio station available, connects quickly to the internet either by contract or wireless Lan, text messaging is a doddle with the choice of full-screen or mini keypad and the sound quality for making receiving telephone calls is excellent. And it probably does loads of other things that I haven’t thought of doing! It reminds me of a cheap model BMW. Dull but very accomplished. And another thing, once you’ve used a touch screen there is no going back to buttons.
Rating: 4 / 5