Over 6 weeks ago, I held the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic for the first time in my hands, courtesy of the nice Nokia marketing chaps in France, and while everyone who had a glimpse at the handset from 100feet away was making a first impressions post, I didn’t write a word about it here. Why? Because I had so many conflicting thoughts about it, I just didn’t care about the “scoop” as much as I cared about my personal misjudgment of the device. The most glaring 5800 issue was that the screen’s responsiveness was very inconsistent: sometimes it would respond to a gentle tap, others it wouldn’t even respond to a strong finger hit. I was almost sure it was a very early prototype unit and didn’t want to start a wave of bad unjustified rumors.
Ever since then, the doubt remained in my head that the situation would stay the same with production handsets, that S60 Touch would be let down by a poorly executed hardware screen and that the 5800 will get into history as the most hyped S60 handset that failed to deliver. And boy am I glad to confirm that it’s definitely not right!
Two weeks ago, I had my 2nd hands-on experience with the 5800 XpressMusic, courtesy of Gregory Taieb from Symbian France, and now that Greg has finished his review of the handset, I can finally tell you what I think of it. I’m not sure if Greg had a production-ready unit or a newer prototype version, but the screen was super duper responsive. In short, it has a great sensitivity level that is very adequate to regular taps, and I found myself not looking for the stylus to use it, even for typing: the 5800 was in my hands for a mere 30 minutes, and I was hammering the on-screen keyboards in no time. Tactile feedback was really nice, and not annoying like I imagined it would be. It’s a small vibration that you can only perceive if you focus on it, but when you forget about it, you find yourself unconsciously getting aware of the taps and the screen’s response, which is pretty cool.
The screen is pretty visible in daylight. Yes, there is one particular angle between your eye, the sun and the screen where you won’t see a thing. But tilt the handset or your face a bit and you’ll be in optimal conditions again. Not a big issue in my opinion.
The 5800 XpressMusic is pretty well built, and fits nicely in the hand. Actually it’s so close in size to the N82, and being that I’m used to those dimensions, I found myself right at home with it. Here are a few comparison shots between the 5800 XpressMusic, the N82 black, the E71 and the N96.
If you’re used to S60 3rd Edition, you’ll find S60 5th Edition more than just familiar. The UI is pretty much the same, except a few modifications which were needed to make it finger-friendly. The only thing that’s really new are the 3 shortcut keys that have been added above Options and Exit to each application to make it easier to access the 3 most frequent actions.
I won’t go into detail here since I didn’t have enough time to try the handset, so for a full hands-on of the 5800 XpressMusic, you can check Rafe Blanford’s two-part (p)review of it: part 1 and part 2. As for me, I was curious about a few things in S60 5th and the 5800 XM:
- Can we select text in the web browser? No. Tapping on the screen doesn’t allow the selection of text, so we’re still left with no way to copy/paste text from a web page.
- How responsive is Nokia Maps? Very responsive. The first time I actually tried the 5800 XpressMusic, Nokia Maps surprised me by being one of the most responsive applications. Zooming in and out is very fast as well as scrolling, searching, loading. It was the same experience the 2nd time as well, so I no longer have doubts about Nokia Maps.
- Does Nokia Maps rotate to landscape? No, but this is the right decision on the 5800 XpressMusic. Given that the screen isn’t very wide, when you rotate it to landscape, and if you count the top menu bar and the lower search bar, it wouldn’t leave much screen estate for the maps. The decision to keep Nokia Maps in portrait is the right one.
- How many feeds can we add in the Contacts Bar? One per contact. I guess it’s a matter of screen estate, but I would’ve loved if we could add more feeds per contact. For example, each person now has a Facebook, a Flickr, maybe a blog, and probably a few other sites where we can follow them. Having to choose only one of these is a bit of a limitation.
I’ll leave you with two pictures I took with the 5800 Xpress Music, one in auto mode and the other in macro mode. A very decent quality in daylight:
What do you think of the 5800 XpressMusic? It seems to have taken Russia by storm as the first reports are coming after it went officially on sale. For me, there’s no doubt about it: S60 Touch is here to stay, and the 5800 Xpress Music is a very decent first attempt. But being so used to my E71/N82 combo, I’ll hold my breath for a flagship Nseries or Eseries touch handset.
