Thursday, October 02, 2008

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic Announcement

After months of leaks and being featured in a movie, the Nokia 5800 has finally been officially announced.


The 5800 is going to be a great phone from Nokia with multimedia at the top of its agenda.

The Nokia 5800 is the first phone running S60 5th edition which brings finger and stylus touch support and a re-worked UI for touch such as an on-screen QWERTY keyboard.


Quick facts:
Name: Nokia 5800
Network:
- 5800-1 EURO GSM 850/900/1800/1900, HSDPA 900/1800
- 5800-2 NAM GSM 850/900/1800/1900, HSDPA 850/1900
- 5800-3 China GSM 950/900/1800/1900
Weight: 109g
Dimensions: 111 x 51.7 x 15.5 mm
Battery life (stand by): 406 h
Battery life (talk): 525 minutes

Hardware-wise, the 5800 brings midrange N-series specs such as:


- 3.2 MP camera Carl-Zeiss optics with dual LED flash
- WiFi (802.11b/g)
- microSD up to 16GB
- 1320 mAh battery
- 3.5mm headset jack supporting Nokia AV (TV-out)
- integrated GPS

What does stand out is the 3.2 inch, 360 x 640 pixels resistive touch screen. Unlike the iPhone but more like the Blackberry Thunder, the Nokia 5800 needs you to push the screen.

It looks standard fare S60 so I hope you weren't expecting something different.

Watching the hands on videos, the 5800 is going to be slow in transitioning from landscape to portrait and vice versa and switching applications. Not sure I'm digging the idea of so many icons and pushing them. S60 3rd edition has a number of shortcut keys that you're going to miss in this iteration.

I think it was a great move by Nokia to position the 5800 as a midrange phone. This way people will be more forgiving with the first round bugs in the 5800 and not expect it to be as polished as Apple's iPhone. It also gives Nokia space to release a much higher spec'ed phone after they work out the kinks with 5th edition.

One big question for all previous S60 owners, how many of our favorite S60 3rd edition applications are going to work on 5th edition?



List of S60 5th edition changes: All About Symbian
Hands on preview: Engadget, SlashGear
For more information see: Nokia Remix Event

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