New kid on the block..Nokia launched its own warrior into the touchscreen phone market today, in the hope it would slay all fruity-based rivals. But unfortunately it falls a little short.
The phone itself is nicely built, feeling sturdy in the hand and the entire screen is easily reached. However, it's a little bit thick, and might cause the standard mobile bulge in the pocket if that's your method of carrying it around.
The screen is, as Nokia says, class-leading however, and is very crisp and bright from the outset.
And it should be noted that the price of this handset, around £220 without subsidy, really is a great price point, meaning it will probably debut for a very low price with most carriers, and even free with many price plans.
Where the heart is
The home screen offers you the chance to pick four contacts to have as you main focus, i.e. you'll be able to see what they're doing social network-wise via an updated RSS feed, and all conversations, tagged photos etc will be shown in a list below each person.
There's also a touch sensitive physical button in the top right hand corner that allows you access to the media bar, which allows the user the chance to pick the internet, photos or other media whenever they fancy it.
However, when using this for multiple applications, the main problem with handset becomes apparent: the S60 OS. It might have worked for handsets in the past, but is in dire need of an upgrade, especially in the face of the recently released Android among others.
Too many applications slows the handset down to a halt, and there's often a perceptible lag or delay in music playback when switching between applications, which might be acceptable to Nokia stalwarts, but will irk newbies to the Finnish way of life.
Media friendly
However, this device does do one of the things it was born to do well, and that's play music and media. Perhaps lacking the intuition of other rival handsets in music playback, the tunes are crisp and clear through the 3,5mm headphone jack, and are belting through the super-loud stereo speakers (though we beg you to NEVER use this feature in public).
Flicking through photos is... OK, but its through video playback the device excels. Movies are crisp and clear, and the screen is large enough to be considered a viable alternative to an Archos, or day we say it, an iPod touch.
Accessing music over the Music Store is rather flash as well, and given this is going to be one of the flagship Comes with Music handsets, it jolly well should be.
A few clicks of internet fun will see you through to a veritable treasure trove of artists that found nearly everything we could think of, and with unlimited downloads this could be a real winner in the mobile music market.
Message in a Tube
Text entry might be a mundane issue for physically-keyed handsets, but on touchscreens becomes all important.
You've got four options here: full QWERTY, mini QWERTY (for portrait mode), handwriting recognition and normal keypad.
Working with your fingers in full QWERTY mode is relatively pleasing, and is as accurate as you'd need (unless you have big old fingers).
The keypad works as well as physical keys, though the handwriting recognition is a pain to get used to, even if you use the included plectrum for novelty value.
But overall you can get your message across with relative ease, though of course it still doesn't beat actually pressing a button to key in a letter.
Back to the 'net
The internet application allows you to access full HTML, which you would expect on a widescreen touch handset, and it's pretty good.
On the one hand there's no multi-touch, and moving the web page around is a little static and slow, but on the other there's Flash compatibility, which is a lovely plus, though YouTube only plays in the mobile version, which is frankly rubbish compared to the full version.
But the experience feels nice and expansive, and once you get your favourites set up, you'll be off and away regularly, and likely with more than a dash of aplomb (sorry, we've been reading a lot of Victorian literature recently).
Nokia Maps is included on the handset, and works as well as another familiar application, which we'll call Moogle Gaps. You might need a few minutes to work out what bit goes where, and it's probably not as intuitive in terms of collaboration with the PC, but it's a nice piece of work.
The camera application on the phone is as good a 3.2MP snapper as you'll find, albeit without the Xenon flash that makes a big difference to camera snappers.
However, the Carl Zeiss lens makes up for the omission, and photos looked nice and colourful, and were pretty whiz-bang fast to actually take.
Overall, we were pretty happy with the Nokia Tube (We refuse to call it the 5800 XpressMusic... damn it). There will obviously be comparisons between this and other phones, but to be honest the price point is such a plus it makes up for the problems in so many ways.
Those of you who adore Nokia (and there are around 60 million of you out there) will like this phone a lot... those that don't will need to experience it to decide for themselves.
But it ticks all the boxes well. It might be a standout device in any specific category, but you might argue that the 5800 XpressMusic... we mean the Tube actually benefits from being a jack of all trades in these converged times.
By Gareth Beavis
Claire: I can't hardly wait for this hottie..i loved Iphone but naturally born to be Nokias. Right now, i'm using Sony Ericsson G900 and after see this road warrior..make me to fall in love again..hihi..my dream guy:Nokia 5800 Tube.
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