The Nokia Music 5800 Xpress Review

After attending the relatively recent Nokia Music Store launch in South Africa I was fortunate enough to be sent the Nokia 5800 Xpress or as it was known in the prototype phase: the Nokia Tube.
Now at first glance it’s a touch screen music phone and that leads to fairly obvious comparisons to the good old iPhone. Now I’ve owned an iPhone before and frankly hated it so I’m certainly not a fan of touch screen phones. The reasons for this are the following: I don’t like the inability to use the phone when walking or moving and secondly the moment a touch screen gets scratched it’s an unpleasant experience to use the phone. Either way, I’ve tried to put my prejudice against touch screen phones in the back of my head.

What comes in the box:

The box that the phone comes in is extremely attractive and I think would be quite a selling point for me. It’s filled with many compartments for the many extras that the phone comes with. Off the top of my head there’s the phone, charger, TV-out cable, Micro USB cable, carrier pouch, plectrum (used as an extra stylus), extra stylus, headphones, a remote for the earphones and some CD’s with the Nokia Music Store software and the Nokia PC Suite Software. You also get an 8 gig Micro SD card for all your music. I like the fact that you can swap out these cards as well. The phone is a solid package with some nice accessories that you would normally have to pay extra for. So far, so good.

Externals:

So lets take a look at externals first. I got the chocolate (the only way I can describe it) version of the phone and I must say it’s pretty good looking. It’s an extremely high-resolution, recessed (something I like) screen rounded by a circular case. In terms of buttons there is a toggle for volume, a button for the camera, a switch that unlocks the phone as well as the power button. There are also three buttons on the front of the phone just below the screen, one for answering a call, another for rejecting it and the third middle button for accessing the menu. The actual device is quite minimalist externally with slick plastic being the predominant material used in the building of the device. On the back of the phone is a small stylus that can be used to interact with the device if need be. The screen is a bit smaller than the iPhone’s but it is of a higher resolution so in my mind that cancels it all out.

You also get given a really nice protective case that the phone slides into. My issue with this case is that while it does have holes in the front to see if your phone lights up you cannot actually see what’s going on requiring you to remove it from the case. There is also a plectrum attached to a lanyard that you can hook on to this case, which can be used much like a stylus. What I do like about the phone is that there is a 3.5-inch audio jack meaning that you can plug in any set of earphones or audio output. My current Nokia E71 has a 2.5-Inch jack meaning that you require a convertor to play music. The earphones were pretty solid in volume and comfort although the cable is pretty short meaning you need to use the remote, which extends to length quite substantially. There is also an accelerometer inside the phone meaning that you can turn the phone on its side and the screen swaps from a portrait view to a landscape view and back again. So far so iPhone. There’s a little space on the touch screen that allows you to have a shortcut to music, movies, messages and web, pretty cool and fairly useful.

I think now is a fair time to touch on the issue of the screen. Now what I find odd about the screen Nokia used is that it is apparently a “Resistive touch screen” meaning that you require a fair amount of force to get any response from the device. At first I didn’t like this at all but in the end I was tolerating it. I’m still not convinced that this was the best choice for the screen as I got the best response from this phone using the stylus rather than my finger ala the iPhone. What I really liked about the setup is that you get a vibration when you use the screen meaning that there is at least some feedback and you’re not just knocking your finger/stylus against a random part of the phone and hoping for the best.

Internals:

This brings us on to the software of the phone. The 5800 Xpress Music is the first touch screen Symbian Series 60 phone and the first to come with the touch screen version of the operating system. If you’ve never used a Nokia with Series 60 on it then you’ll probably be initially lost in its complexity. As a long-standing and current Series 60 user I was quite impressed with the changes they made to accommodate a touch screen. You’re greeted with a home screen that provides time, date and any information on calls/messages you might have missed. What is really intuitive about this interface is the ability to have four contacts that you most often use and have shortcuts to them. These contacts are four little blocks on the top (you can set the picture that it uses) and then when you click on these contacts you have the option of seeing when you and they last called or sent a message. Rather interestingly you could also add a “feed” of some sorts (I assume an RSS feed) but I never tried to get this working properly.

Connectivity wise you’ve got USB, Bluetooth, HSDPA and Wi-fi so you’ll never be lacking for any connection anywhere. Symbian Series 60 also allows for multitasking, something the iPhone still cannot do. While you don’t have the Apple app store there are plenty applications to download and the Nokia Music and Application stores are coming soon.
Delving into the menu you’re giving a 3X3 grid with a wide range of further menus and applications. I didn’t delve into each and every menu as I tried to see if the 5800 could replace my beloved (seriously, I love this phone) Nokia E71 so my logic was to attempt similar behaviour. This behaviour does not include delving into every menu I can possibly find. My needs are “simple” in a sense. I require email, mobile web, SMS, phone calls and occasionally a GPS. For the purpose of this review I will discuss these functions as well as some of the multimedia abilities that are obviously a major selling point of this phone.

I’ll lump SMS and email in one category since Nokia does the same with the “messaging” application. While the ability to SMS and email is pretty stock standard what this does bring up is the issue of text input. The Nokia approach to text input on a touch only screen is to give you plenty of options so that everyone is happy. Basically you’re given four different keyboards and the option of using your fingers or a stylus. The keyboards are: Qwerty, mini-qwerty, handwriting recognition and finally the old T9 9 digit keypad as with a normal phone. I find the Qwerty keyboard (that requires you to turn the phone sideways) is the only method of input that allows you to use your fingers while the others require a stylus or similarly small object. Maybe I have butchers hands but the mini-qwerty keyboard was like pulling teeth for me when using just my fingers. With the Stylus is was pretty good and even better when using the larger sized QWERTY keyboard. I chose only to use the stylus due to my previously mentioned large fingers but I was pretty fast with it by the time the week was over.

This brings us to the web portion of the phone. The web section is actually a menu rather than just opening up a browser and has shortcuts to mobile Myspace and Facebook. Unfortunately this is not an independent application but rather just opens the web browser. The web browser is the typical Series 60 web browser: not as good as the iPhone browser but much better than the Windows Mobile browser. Sites loaded fast especially via HSDPA and Wi-fi. On the topic of Wi-fi there is a major flaw in inputting Wi-fi passwords. You get a number pad much like a normal cellphone. What this means is that you need to hold down the button if you want a letter. This gets pretty frustrating after a while when you use a lot of different networks.
Phone calls were very, very good on this phone. The signal is very good since it’s a plastic casing and the actual quality of the calls is great as well. I quite often use the speakerphone and the loud stereo speakers are great for this function. In terms of music it’s got a great application. There is also the ability to download Podcasts and watch movies. You can even watch the movies on your TV using the TV-out cable.

The one thing that bugged me on this phone was the fact that if you keep it in silent and miss the phone vibrating then you don’t have a reminder as the screen goes blank again. All you need is a little light that flashes if you miss something. A minor gripe but anyway.

Ultimately I’m reticent to compare this to the iPhone in any way, as it’s a very different phone. I think this phone does what it tries to do perfectly and in some ways I prefer Symbian Series 60 to the iPhone’s operating system. I think it all comes down to price though and the quality of the Nokia Music Store. In a sense I feel like this is a similar situation to the iPhone when it first came out; it was not perfect in any way but showing a ton of promise. I really like the 5800 Xpress Music and if it’s a sign of where Nokia is going with their touch screen phones then Apple is in for a substantial shock.

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