Nokia 5800 XpressMusic Preview

I was in Manhattan this past weekend and dropped by the New York City Nokia Flagship Store just to see what was new. Inside they had the stylish 7610 Supernova powered by S40 on display. Nokia was also showcasing one of their key products to compete in the touch screen cell phone market, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic:



My initial impressions of the 5800 XpressMusic were "this is a really nice screen and I really like the simplistic icons". The phone fits my hand comfortably.

Quick facts:
Name: Nokia 5800 XpressMusic
CPU: Freescale MXC300, 369 MHz ARM1136JF-S RISC + StarCore SC140 DSP
RAM: 256 MB (user accessible: 81 MB)
Network: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 WCDMA 850/1900
Weight: 109 g
Dimensions: 51.7 x 111 x 15.5 mm

Follow the jump to find out if the 5800 XpressMusic is worth buying.

Navigation & Touchscreen
Scrolling throw lists and menus works like any other S60 phone so you have to scroll with the scroll bar and you can't just flick your finger as you do on the iPhone. As most people have mentioned, it's annoying that some buttons require a single click while others require a double tap. This was my thought process when the menu didn't respond: the phone wasn't responsive, didn't catch my click, or I needed to double tap. That left me with an overall impression that the UI was very slow and needed a lot of work. It also incorrectly determined where my finger hit the screen a few times. To be fair, the 5800 on display was still running on initial firmware. Nokia has better get it's phones updated as first impressions are very important and firmware upgrades make a big difference.

Performance
The 5800's CPU is either not up to the task or its firmware needs a lot of work. Rotating photos took more than a second to perform, opening up the Batman Darknight trailer took a few seconds to load, and scrolling through Nokia Maps was horrendously slow. I felt like I was using a S60 phone from 3 years ago. Nokia Maps annoyed me so much with it's slow response times and incorrect gesture sensing that I turned it off after a few minutes of use. Clicking on the top right Media Bar button took a while to pull up the media bar. I came away feeling this phone wasn't ready for prime time.

Display
The 5800 sports a 3.2 inch TFT display. It's narrow and wide. A little more narrow than the 16:9 widescreen format used by most movies so playing the Batman Darknight looks really small on the screen. To me it wasn't much better than watching movies on my E71. Although it's a resistive screen (requiring you to push the screen as opposed to just touching like the iPhone), it's fairly strong so it doesn't distort too much when you push on it.

Camera
The 5800's 3.2 MP camera produces better photos than the E71 but doesn't compare to the N82 I used to take the photo above. It's a decent camera but it's not going to win any awards. One of its strength is its video capture capability that records up to 640 x 480 pixels at 30 fps.

Overall
I was fairly disappointed by the performance of the 5800 XpressMusic. Using the touch screen was frustrating as it was either slow or unresponsive. Rotating a photo required more than a second and playing a video required a fairly annoying loading time. I would never consider this phone a replacement for either of my N82 or E71. After trying out the 5800 XpressMusic, I would never consider recommending this phone to anyone and would likely recommend people to avoid this phone. I just hope the N97 improves a lot over this first S60 5th edition phone.

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

"Phone start-up failed"

I was updating QuickOffice on my phone when it stalled and hung my phone. I did a restart and the unthinkable showed up right after the Nokia hands:

"Phone start-up failed. Contact the retailer"

I first tried removing the memory card and restarting. Failed.
I tried removing the SIM card and restarting. Failed.

You can't re-install the firmware because it doesn't get into any of the data modes. I wasn't going to send my N82 back to Europe for servicing and be without it for a long time. I was cringing at what it would cost at an independent store.

Thankfully Nokia added a fail safe. You can wipe out the phone memory (lose all your contacts if you have it set to phone memory, notes, etc.) and restore it back to the last firmware on the phone by (a method commonly known as the 3 finger salute):

Hold the green call button, the "3" key, and "*" key all at the same time while starting up the phone.

If you have 5800 (firmware V. 20.0.012), hold the green call button, the red hang up button, and the camera button all at the same time while staring up the phone.

If you have N97, hold the "Caps" key, "Space bar" key, "Backspace" key, and "Power" button all at the same time while staring up the phone.

The phone will slightly flicker and prompt you for your country. Now my N82 is back to a factory clean state.

*UpdateYou can also do this on S60 5th edition like the 5800 (firmware V.20.0.012 or higher): hold the green call button, red end call button, and camera key all at the same time while starting up the phone.

Note: I'd only use this as a last resort.

Note: This doesn't save you from a botched firmware upgrade using Nokia Software Updater.

Note: Be careful with your phone.

Note: Although I did this with a N82, I'm sure it'll work on other S60 phones like the N95.