I think it’s good to start the new year off with something positive, so I’ve been keeping track of the things that I really love about the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. Keep in mind, this is not an exhaustive list of the best features of the phone, but merely the top 5 features/abilities that really stand out to me. Tomorrow, I’ll rain on the parade with the top 5 things that I can’t stand about the phone, so look forward to that, as well.
1. Haptic feedback – it’s not localized, which means that when you press a button, the whole phone vibrates, not just the area you touched. However, the vibrate is very nice and quick, and you can set it to three different levels of intensity (or simply turn it off). I keep it on high, though, as I think it’s an excellent way to overcome at least some of the obstacles with a full-touch navigation user interface, such as is on the 5800 XpressMusic.
2. The slide-lock – I really hope to see this feature present on all new Nokias moving forward. While the 5800 XpressMusic’s slide-lock is bigger than the N85′s, it’s not at all in the way, and I find that I’m using it constantly. It’s much more intuitive than pressing left softkey+*, or whatever the different combinations have been.
3. It’s completely finger-friendly – Not once, when using the phone, did I absolutely need to pull out the stylus. Sure, I’ve used the stylus a few times, but only really to test out the mini-QWERTY keyboard (which is awful) and the handwriting recognition (it’s decent). Aside from that, you can access, manipulate, or do anything else to the phone that you need to without pulling the stylus out once, and I think that’s a big plus.
4. It’s loud. When the early hands-on previews said this was by far the loudest phone they’d ever used, they weren’t exaggerating. The speaker grilles are deceivingly small, and put out really nice sound.
5. It’s really pretty. Nokia did an excellent job in the user interface of adding just enough eye candy, without overdoing it. The menu transitions are nice and fluid, and there are little graphical elements here and there that simply look nice. Even the theme icons, which look like the new Ovi icons, look beautiful, and I know there is a project underway by the theming community to extract those and make them available as an icon pack, so that themers can use in their themes.
It’s a small list, but those are the aspects of the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic that I really enjoy, and have come to love about the device. Tomorrow, I want to share with you a list of 5 items that I really just can’t stand about the phone. If you already have a Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, what are some features that you absolutely love about the phone?
