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Published in Mobiles

Nokia launches the 5800 XpressMusic

by on03 October 2008

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The phone formerly known as the Tube

With so many blurry photos of the Nokia 5800 ExpressMusic, or the Tube, as it was codenamed, it's great to finally get to see what it looks like and although Nokia hasn't created an "iPhone killer" we have a feeling that they'll appeal to a wide range of users.

The 5800 XpressMusic has a big 3.2-inch widescreen touch display with a resolution of 640x360 pixels and it can play back full screen video at 30fps. On top of this, the 5800 XpressMusic is Nokia's second attempt at a touch screen phone, but as the previous one never really launched (that was the 7710), this seems like it might be Nokia's first success with a touch screen device.

Nokia has gone for a stylus approach when it comes to navigation, rather than the finger poking way of the iPhone and this does, of course, have advantages and disadvantages. However, Nokia supplies both a standard pen-type stylus and one that looks more like a plectrum, and which is attached to a hand strap on the phone. The upside with using a stylus is that the 5800 XpressMusic supports handwriting recognition and the screen won't be as prone to finger print smuding. The downside would be the lack a multi-touch UI, but Series 60 version 5 isn't really designed to offer this kind of functionality.

Other features include HSDPA, although only at 3.6Mbps, built in 802.11b/g WiFi, an aGPS receiver, Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP, an accelerometer and a 3.2Megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, auto focus, a dual LED flash and the ability to shoot video at 640x480 at 30fps. Nokia also supplies an 8GB microSD card in the box, since the 81MB of internal memory won't last very long once you start loading up a bit of music and video on the 5800 XpressMusic. There's a top-mounted 3.5mm audio jack and the supplied headset also features a 3.5mm jack if you want to use your own headphones with it.

Nokia has gone for a micro USB port for charging and PC connectivity, although there still appears to be a separate Nokia charging connector as well, all located at the top of the device. The 5800 XpressMusic also supports TV-out, although this appears to be done via the headphone jack, so we suspect it's limited to composite video.

At 111x51.7x15.5mm the 5800 XpressMusic isn't tiny, but it's not overly bulky either ,considering the screen size and at 109g it's quite pocket friendly. It will be available in three different versions: one with HSDPA support for most of the world, one with US HSDPA support and one version that only supports GSM, which we presume will be retailing for slightly less than the HSDPA versions. Nokia has set the price to €279 excluding VAT and we'd expect it to be going for free from many of the European networks once it gets subsidized. Nokia is also set to release a Comes with Music version sometime in Q1 next year.

You can find the product page here for more details.

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Last modified on 04 October 2008
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