Nokia 5800 XpressMusic Launched

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic Launched

Samir Makwana, Oct 03, 2008 1333 hrs IST

A first XpressMusic series touchscreen phone that offers 'Comes with Music' service.

After much ado, Nokia has finally launched Nokia 5800 XpressMusic phone, earlier dubbed as Tube. Details of the same were reported last week.

This is the first Symbian S60 5th Edition based touchscreen phone from Nokia, which it has smartly branded as an XpressMusic series phone that offers 'Comes with Music' service. The music service offers unlimited access to Nokia Music Store catalogue for one year.

Though 5800 XpressMusic will be directly compared with the iPhone 3G and its features will certainly attract touchscreen gadget fans, like other Symbian phones the applications on 5800 XpressMusic appear with translucent overlay and at times appear cluttered.

Network and Communication
The 5800 XpressMusic supports 3G networks with quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, dual-band WCDMA, HSDPA, WLAN (802.11 b/g), HSCSD, and TCP/IP support. With Flight Mode found in music phones, the 5800 supports 3G networks for faster Internet over data networks.

The phone includes Nokia Maps 2.0 Touch built-in application, while Mobile Transfer Protocol support and TV out (video out cable bundled) allow streaming of multimedia. Also featured is Bluetooth version 2.0 support for file transfers.

Touchscreen Display
The 5800 XpressMusic is a full touchscreen phone with three buttons on the front panel - Talk, Menu control, and End. The 3.2-inch haptic touchscreen display offers a widescreen 640 x 360 pixel resolution, featuring acceleration sensor for Automatic Screen Rotation (ASR) and 3D Image engine. To make the best of touchscreen 5800 features, a 'Media Bar' drop-down menu for easy access to favorite media applications such as music, videos, and photos is provided.

In addition, there is a 'Contact Bar' drop-down menu, which allows adding four contacts, as well as access to recent activities such as messages, call history or emails with a single touch. The touch interface supports input via finger, stylus, and plectrum. Text input is possible with full QWERTY thumbboard software while stylus can be used for applications that require handwriting recognition. The phone is also believed to have a proximity sensor for auto turn-off feature.

Music
The 5800 XpressMusic has 81MB of internal memory and comes bundled with an 8GB microSDHC card; that can pack 6000 songs enjoyable over 3.5-mm jack, says the company. The memory is expandable up to 16GB maximum. Besides that, the 5800 features Nseries digital music player that supports audio files in MP3, SpMidi, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+ and WMA format. With eight-band graphic equalizer, music can be enhanced with bass boosters, stereo widening and loudness. Similar equalization options are found in Sony Ericsson's Walkman series and K series digital music players.

Apart from the above, the 5800 boasts of dedicated audio chip that promises clearer surround sound output with integrated stereo speakers. Radio fanatics are taken care of by Stereo FM radio usable with headset.

Video and Picture
The phone houses an autofocus 3.2 megapixel camera, Carl Zeiss Tessar lens that offers VGA video recording at 30 fps. The Symbian 5th Edition has a browser capable enough for Flash video streaming, along with H.264, On2 VP6 and Screnson Video Codecs. For that the browser uses a special plug-in based on the new Adobe Flash Lite 3, which is also found in N85.

The 5800 features 128 SDRAM memory, which helps in better video streaming for the browser having Adobe Flash Lite 3 plug-in. The Real Player featured is capable of playing videos in Landscape mode. The video editor can be used to cut long clips short as well. The maximum clip length is 1hr 30 minutes in high or normal quality, depending on the memory card size that you'd use.

You can view detailed specifications of Nokia 5800 XpressMusic here.

Nokia will make 5800 XpressMusic available worldwide in the fourth quarter of 2008 at an estimated price of 279 Euros (a little over Rs. 18,000) excluding taxes and subsidies. So, if it comes to India, expect more than the stated price, which includes taxes obviously. The phone does sound like it has a big opportunity to attract Nokia-loyal customers who're looking for touchscreen music phones at a mid-range pricing.

Stay tuned for full details on the performance of Nokia 5800 XpressMusic once our test labs get their hands on it.