It’s been 3 years since I discovered and fell in love with S60, and it’s been 3 years that I’ve been aching for a touchscreen interface on S60. Even before there were rumors of Apple announcing a phone, even before there were talks of S60 5th Edition, I wanted a touchscreen slapped onto my S60 devices, so I could have quick access to everything on that screen without clicking, clicking, clicking, clicking… When the Nokia 5800 was announced in all its touchscreen glory and all the small accessories that come with it, with that small price point, I managed to get my hands on it twice. I was then pretty convinced that my next device will have to run S60 5th, but that it probably won’t be the Nokia 5800 itself. That was until last week, when I received a nice blue Nokia 5800 to trial for a while.
Moving my SIM card from the Nokia E71, with its all glorious qwerty keyboard and 50 keys on the front (I’ve counted them), to the Nokia 5800 with just 3 keys wasn’t easy. It wasn’t easy at all. For the first day or two, I kept struggling a bit, trying to figure out the right way to do things. But I eventually got used it. And now, a few days later, I find myself enjoying the 5800 to a point where I went ahead and bought one, and decided to sell my Nokia N82 in return. It still hasn’t arrived yet, but I’m pretty excited and I’m enjoying the trial 5800 unit in my hands right now.
Now, let me be clear. S60 5th isn’t perfect, it isn’t perfect at all. There are just too many instances where it’s confusing, not finger friendly, and rather annoying. Likewise, the 5800 isn’t even close to being perfect. For example, without a d-pad and a shift key, it’s almost excrutiating to do multiple selections. Without kinetic scrolling and without a dpad, it’s a torture to browse long lists and long web pages.
Nevertheless, the 5800 managed to get me excited about S60 again. Since I get several s60 devices to trial, I confess that sometimes I get bored of seeing the same icons with the same layout, the same options, and having to install the same applications, to end up with almost always the same user experience. It wasn’t at all this way with the 5800 XpressMusic, I was led on a journey of discoveries that made me fall in love with S60 again. Maybe not with the platform as it is, but with the whole ecosystem of developers that evolves around it.
The impact of a higher resolution screen
Although several people have been asking for a higher screen resolution on S60 devices for a while, high resolution doesn’t really have any impact on a 2.2″ or 2.4″ physical screen. But on a 3.2″ screen, higher resolution makes all the difference in the world. Beside being incredibly convenient for picture and especially video viewing, as well as web browsing, this higher resolution screen is pushing developers to improve the graphical layout of their applications. It is also pushing new developers to come up with applications that are graphically pleasing, like the simple but awesome subway widgets from PixelsBeatPaper, and PhotoFlow by Scalado.
The impact of a touchscreen
The lack of any keys on the 5800 XpressMusic, although considered as a negative point from my user experience point of view, is a TOTAL positive point when you take developers into account. The fact that there are no physical keys on the 5800 is pushing some developers to create a new user experience on their apps by optimizing them for touch. Even though several applications just work on S60 5th like they do on S60 3rd, others have been fully optimized to work beautifully on a touchscreen, like LonelyCatGames’ X-Plore and Profimail, Nimbuzz, Gravity, to name a few. There is also the case of applications that didn’t even exit on S60 3rd but that are being developed extensively for S60 5th, like the Handwriting Calculator by Nokia Beta Labs.
The 5800 XpressMusic is the best thing that has happened to S60 in a long time
Although let down but some usability issues and although lacking on several software and hardware points by comparison to Eseries and Nseries, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic has brought a full community of developers back on its feet. We were starting to feel a saturated market on S60 3rd, and here comes the 5800, bringing unlimited new possibilites and lots of new things to be excited about. That’s why I decided to give up on my Nokia N82, it basically doesn’t have a lot of differences with my E71, whereas the 5800 XM, oh my! It has all the differences in the world!
The E71 and the 5800 XM will be my new device setup, one for productivity and one for unlimited fun, until I can afford to sell both in order to get a Nokia N97. The N97, my friends, is the sum of everything that I have ever wanted in a device, and today I’m even more convinced about it, thanks to the 5800.
