Not Another Mobile Phone Blog

Ok, I know I am pretty late in posting this as, most of you must have read a lot about the first XpressMusic touch screen phone, the Nokia 5800 that was launched a long time back. I recently got the device to play around with and would like to share my experiences with this device. I had earlier covered a lot of user reviews, which were sent across to me by some of the NAMP readers, who also own the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. You can check out the reviews here and here.

When you hold the Nokia 5800 for the first time you will feel two things, the phone is small in size than it looks in commercials as well as on the box and it is really very light. Many touch screen phones, which I have used or came across are generally a bit on the heavier side. But the Nokia 5800 is pretty light as compared to its brothers from other mothers. The screen of the phone is pretty big and makes viewing and browsing a bliss. The controls of the phone are pretty handy.

The top is cramped up with the power button, microUSB slot and a standard 3.5mm headphone jack. I guess, giving the microUSB port on the bottom of the phone would have been nice. The other controls of the phone like the volume controller, screen locking button, camera button are pretty handy and can be used even if you use the phone with single hand.

When you activate the screen using the screen lock/unlock slider button, you are presented with a high resolution screen with your normal operator logo, clock, shortcut menus. At the bottom of the screen you will see two icons, which are really easy to guess if you are using the phone for the first time. The one on your left side is the number pad and the other icon is the phone book icon.


The front of the phone has three small keys, Green White and Red. No points for guessing what the red and green keys stand for. But yeah, being a S60 smart phone, you will look out for the traditional menu key that is present on all the S60 phones. Here, the white key is your menu key. Once you click that you will be presented with the main menu of the phone. The touch screen can be operated using your fingers as well as the stylus that is provided at the back of the phone. But I would recommend you to use your fingers to do the browsing as you will love the way the phone vibrates when you touch the screen or try to get into any menu. The stylus can be used to do more tedious tasks like scrolling cause if you have big fingers you will find scrolling difficult. The scrolling on the Nokia 5800 does not happen like that in the iPhone. You cannot flip through the contents except you are browsing the photographs.

At the back, there is a 3.2 mega pixel snapper with Carl Zeiss lens. The camera quality is ok in bright light but it does not do that well in low light conditions. The camera comes equipped with a dual LED flash, which is really bright. You can also customize your pics to an extent using the in-built photo editor. There are stereo speakers at the lower back and the output is loud and clear. Overall the device looks nice and the UI is good not as great as the iPhone UI, which most of you must have come across. Some changes are necessary. Also, sometimes the UI hangs, which can be a turn off. I must say that, Nokia has not failed with the launch of its first S60 5th Edition touch screen device. I will tell you guys more about the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic in detail in my upcoming review posts.