First impressions: Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

The Nokia 5800 was finally revealed, ditching the Tube moniker but still keeping all there is to love about Nokia handsets in a sleek offering with more than just a fancy touchscreen.

It’s slim, intuitive and packs more features to keep you entertained than ever. It’s off to a great start already.

For a start it’s slimmer than the N95 8GB and feels more than comfortable nestling in your hand. Its smooth edges are a real treat for the palms.

Diving in what you’ll first notice is the all new Symbian S60 5th edition interface. Apple’s iPhone interface always was going to take some beating but the 5800’s is just as intuitive. Not bad for Nok’s first touch gizmo.

Everything is where you’d hope it to be too. One-touch drop down menus and even the most regular features such as a calendar come to life on the 5800 working wonderfully well on it’s 3.2-inch widescreen display.

Unlike the iPhone though it’s packed with haptic feedback letting you feel every action from texting to skimming through your contacts bringing the handset to life.

The iPhone’s not the only handset with fancy dan accelerometers either. Motion gaming can be just as neato on the Nok. Racing games for example take on a new lease of life on the 5800 letting you tilt to steer. Burning phone rubber on the train will never be the same.

Nokia claimed you’ll be able to access the whole Internet, not just bits of it. And it looks like they’ve kept that promise. Web browsing is a cinch thanks to the intuitive interface. Pages load up pretty quickly thanks to 3G and HSDPA providing some ace web wizardry.

It might give you access to lots, and lots of music but it’s pretty nifty at letting you share tunes with your mates, which you can do via SMS. They’ll even be able to find your songs on Nokia’s Music Store.

The fussy might point to the 3.2 megapixel camera as the weak link at a time when the likes of Samsung and LG is offering 8, but with Carl Zeiss optics giving pics a polish it still produces phone snaps worthy of any top phone. It certainly trumps the iPhone’s paltry 2-megapixel affair.

With the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic Nokia might have just pulled a phone shaped rabbit out the hat. iPhone botherer? It certainly looks like one.

What you need to know
Availability: Early 2009
Price: £219
Basic specs: 3G, HSDPA, 3.2-megapixel camera, 81 MB internal memory upgradeable to 16GB
Killer feature: Movie and music friendly features
Closest rival: iPhone 3G

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