Nokia 5800 XpressMusic Review

Text input and Messaging:

There are several methods of input available with the 5800. The first one is handwriting recognition, which is easier with the stylus. The second one is with a Mini QWERTY keyboard, which is actually a tiny, yet full QWERTY that can be moved around. In our view, it’s mostly suitable in case you need to type a few words quickly, but then again, we needed the stylus, because of the small size of the keys. If you need to write something longer you’d better use the full-screen QWERTY. When you chose it, it takes up the larger part of the screen and automatically changes to landscape view. The last alternative is a standard numeric keypad.


These were the available typing options and we found that the two QWERTY keyboards are the most convenient alternatives. We used them to write SMS, MMS and e-mail messages. The good news is that the phone features automatic settings for the most popular e-mail services (Google, Yahoo and so on). Moreover, we liked the different ways to sort your messages: by day, sender, alphabetically, according to the subject or by type.


Connectivity and Internet

The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic features quad-band GSM, which makes it usable everywhere in the world. The situation with the 3G support is a bit different. There are a European and an American version, and for some regions, even a 3G-less version is expected. If you prefer the last one, keep in mind that it is the only one that doesn’t have a built-in Wi-Fi. In order to establish a local connection, you can use the cable from the package, or connect wirelessly via Bluetooth 2.0, which supports stereo, unlike the iPhone.

The internet browser Nokia employed on the previous “smart” models is well known and generally liked, but is it going to be up to grade here? We’ve often wondered what would it feel like to use it with a touch screen, and we’ve finally got our opportunity to test it. It perfectly opens our quite complex internet page, including the Flash elements. Navigating is smooth and thanks to the high resolution of 360x640 pixels a large part of the page is able to fit easily on the screen. There’s also a pan view, which is a very usable feature when viewing larger sites. Zooming in and out is done from the options or by double tapping, similarly to iPhone’s Safari and Opera Mobile 9.5.



We absolutely had to test the device by playing YouTube videos on the 3.2-inch widescreen display. We experienced some problems when trying to play videos from the mobile version of the popular site, either when we were connected to our Wi-Fi network or to our cellular onethe one of the used carrier. That’s We why we went to the tried the standard version of the site and . We  didn’t have the same problem there and were able to watch a few comedy movies on full screen with pleasure.  Unfortunately  Too bad, that the recently added option for playing in HD is missing. This, however, couldn’t spoil our good impression of the browser. It’s definitely easier and quicker to use it with a touch screen, rather than with navigation keys.