Let me bracket my criticism with some disclaimers. I spent a few days with a pre-release, non-U.S. model of the 5800. I expect (or at least hope) that Nokia will fix many of the bugs I saw before the 5800's release Stateside early next year. And U.S. versions of phones typically look quite a bit different from their overseas counterparts, software-wise.
The 3.85-ounce 5800 definitely looks like your typical Nokia, with its narrow candybar-style body (4.4 by 2 by .6 inches—HWD). The front of the phone is dominated by a huge 3.2-inch, 640-by-360-pixel touch screen. There's a tiny self-portrait camera above the LCD, along with a quick-action button that pops up a menu of the most-frequently used applications. Below the screen, are Select, Pick Up, and End Call buttons. On the back of the phone is a 3.2-megapixel camera with an LED flash. On the side are volume and camera controls, a lock switch, and a MicroSD card slot.
Built around a speedy 377Mhz ARM9 processor, the phone feels fast. Within the traditional Symbian Series 60 menu system, you'll find the typical reliable apps, such as the GPS-powered Nokia Maps, an FM radio, a podcasting client, and both POP/IMAP and Microsoft Exchange mail clients.
The U.S. version of the phone will support 850/1900 HSDPA, quad-band EDGE (3G on AT&T and 2G on T-Mobile), and Wi-Fi. Calls sounded fine on the 5800, and the handset connected to both 3.5-mm wired and mono and stereo Bluetooth headsets without problems. The speakerphone was nice and loud without any distortion. Like on most Nokia phones, the voice dialing is mediocre—it's less accurate than the popular Nuance suite you see on many other phones. A cool feature: You can put photos of four of your favorite contacts on the home screen for easy dialing.
Unfortunately, in its first touch-screen handset, Nokia didn't get a lot right. If you have a touch screen–only device, your navigation gestures (swiping, zooming, and dragging) need to work perfectly. Some touch-screen gadgets hedge their bets by including a track-ball or cursor pad. Nokia puts all its chips on the 5800's touch screen, and it's a bad bet.
My phone's accelerometer was over-sensitive, flipping the device between portrait and landscape too easily and blacking out the screen for a second every time it reoriented. In the Web browser, my dragging scrolls were often mistaken for zooms, causing the screen to magnify when I only intended to move around. You do get haptic feedback, however; the phone provides a subtle, but satisfying vibration when you press a button on the screen.
Still, the 5800 offers some frustrating text-entry options. If you want a large-enough, finger-friendly keyboard, it takes over the whole screen and you lose what you're looking at. Otherwise you need to use the handwriting recognizer or pull out a stylus (there's one onboard) and use the smaller keyboard.
I couldn't test the "Comes with Music" program, which will surely be the 5800's most compelling feature. In some countries, the phone will be sold with unlimited music downloads for a year—and you can keep the music files forever. While this offering is certainly compelling and aims directly at Apple, Nokia couldn't confirm that this feature will be included in U.S. handsets.
I tried to sync the 5800 with my Windows Vista PC, but Nokia's PC Suite wouldn't recognize it—likely because the phone hasn't been released yet. I was able to drag and drop songs and videos onto the included 8GB MicroSD card, however. (There's also 86MB of memory on board—mostly for apps and photos.) My test handset stalled while trying to absorb 900 songs into its library, and I had to reboot. After that, it was fine. But dragging and dropping—or, for that matter, using Nokia PC Suite—is clumsier than Apple's smooth iPhone/iTunes integration. Both MP4 and WMV videos looked and sounded great on the wide 640-by-360 display.
The 3.2-megapixel camera with LED flash is middling at best. Most of the shots I took were blurry, grainy, or noisy. I had a far better experience capturing video, which was recorded in a widescreen, 640-by-352 format at 30 frames per second. Video does show some visible compression artifacts, but it looks a lot better than what you get on a typical camera phone.
My 5800's instant-messaging program didn't work. And the phone is missing some applications I like on Nokia's N-series and E-series phones, including the QuickOffice Microsoft Office document reader and Nokia's Microsoft Exchange mail connector, the latter of which wouldn't install. Again, I imagine these problems will be straightened out before the phone is launched.
Nokia makes excellent phones by leading the way. The company's Nseries media phones, like the N82 and the N95 8GB typically top our cameraphone charts, the E71 puts a keyboard into a uniquely elegant form factor and some Nokia feature phones, such as the 5310, really stand out. But, while it is an early model, the 5800 still feels like a panicked reaction to the iPhone. A year of free music may very well vault this handset to success, but the phone I saw still has a way to go.
SPEC DATA :Price as Tested: $359.99 List
Service Provider: AT&T, T-Mobile
Operating System: Other
Screen Size: 3.2 inches
Screen Details: 640x360, 16-million-color LCD touch screen
Camera: Yes
Megapixels: 3.2 MP
802.11x: Yes
Bluetooth: Yes
Web Browser: Yes
Network: GSM, UMTS
Bands: 850, 900, 1800, 1900, 2100
High-Speed Data: GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA
Processor Speed: 377 MHz
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