Nokia 5800 XpressMusic - A Commitment to Music

Feel that Rhythm

Having had a successful run with its Symbian S60 operating system, especially with its older, but more popular Nokia N95 8GB, it was high time Nokia left familiar grounds and evolved to catch-up with the other players in the market. As you might have surmised, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic will be the first of many other touchscreen devices (think Nokia N97 which will be available within the first half of 2009) from the Finnish giant with an updated OS. To sweeten the deal, the 5800 XpressMusic will have Comes with Music bundled within, with Singapore being the first in the region and second in the world to introduce Nokia's own unlimited music download service. In our earlier article, we've taken a and some of its newer touchscreen features. But how will it fare on an actual unit? The answers are coming right up after a quick glance at the phone's specifications below.

Touch Me, Hold Me

On first appearances with 5800 XpressMusic, you're bound to notice the generous display size of the phone. As its specifications indicate, the 5800 XpressMusic comes with a 3.2-inch screen that's optimized for touch screen navigation. And yes, we adore the 3.2-inch screen, for many reasons. One, it gives you more room to navigate through the various icons on the user interface. Two, watching videos will be a breeze on the expansive 3.2-inch screen that comes with an accelerometer for landscape viewing.

The 5800 XpressMusic's design comes in a minimalist form, i.e. less is better. As such, the only obvious buttons you'll see on the outlook are the Call/End buttons flanking the Menu button at the bottom of the device. Flip over to the sides, and you'll notice two covers for both the microSD and SIM card slot. Now here's our biggest grouse with the device: the SIM card slot. On the surface, it seems as though inserting the SIM card is pretty easy: open, insert, and close. Yes, that is pretty easy when it come to insertion. Now, extraction of the SIM card is another ball game. Try as we might, we couldn't eject the SIM card out and wondered if there is even a spring mechanism involved to eject it as is the norm for such designs. Sadly, there isn't. Once we opened up the battery casing, we spotted a quick instruction on SIM card extraction. Essentially, you need to remove the battery, take out the stylus, and insert it into a groove within the device to push the SIM card out.

Speaking of the battery casing, we do need to highlight an observation of ours. In our attempts to remove the SIM card, we also noticed that prying the battery casing open requires some force on the user's end. Unfortunately, the build quality of the 5800 XpressMusic's battery casing is not something to shout about, and during our daily handling, we actually dented one of the plastic tabs. In doing so, we were unable to insert the stylus back to its holder properly until we forcefully twisted the tab back into place. So much for ease of usage and quite unlike a Nokia device.

What we did admire about the device, is the dedicated key guard slider on the right profile. Positioned at the centre right side of the device, it felt very natural and smooth when we slid our thumb onto the slider and locked the device. However, the volume buttons are a little too flushed for our liking, but given for a fact that you can adjust the volume via its touchscreen display, we'll give this a miss.

If an XpressMusic device doesn't come with a 3.5mm audio jack, we would be at a loss for words. Thankfully we weren't disappointed and the 5800 XpressMusic's 3.5mm audio jack is located at the crown of the device. In this spot, it shares the same real estate space with the power button, charging port and microUSB port. Now, if you think about this, with the microUSB port at the top of the device, you can connect it to your PC, yet have the device aligned straight to your sight without wires bent. We've seen this design aspect in some recent Nokia devices, and truth is, we do like that.

Come Away with Nokia

By now, most of you would have heard about the 5800 XpressMusic's operating system, the Symbian S60 V5.0. As it is, there seems to be a plethora of touchscreen devices for the year, and Nokia has made it just in time with the introduction of its first touchscreen capable phone. Our earlier featured most, if not all of the goodies you'll find on the 5800 XpressMusic. And on the 5800 XpressMusic, there aren't any new surprises. You'll get the full touchscreen experience, and of course, the new Contact Bar theme on the home screen. So if you're more interested in the user interface, you might want to check out the for more information.

 Since we've already covered the new interface, let us focus on something that's closer to the consumer's hearts: the Comes with Music service. Though Comes with Music has been on the market since late last year over in the United Kingdom, Singapore will be the first in the region to launch the unlimited music service from Nokia. For those of you who are still not familiar with this music service (even after all the TV and radio commercials), here's a quick recap:

• Unlimited music downloads from Nokia Music Store for a year from the date of activation.
• Able to keep all tracks downloaded, even after the one year limit.

Now, these are the two main focus points of the Comes with Music service. However, there are limitations involved.

Firstly, there is the one-to-one relationship between your Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and the accompanying PC. Due to the Digital Rights Management that's tagged to Nokia Music Store tracks, each track that's downloaded is tied to either your phone, or to the specified PC. Of course, one might ponder on the possibility of changing a PC in the midst of your one year download. No issues here, since there is the possibility of reassigning the ownership to a new PC. Here's the catch: you can only reassign a new PC once every 90 days.

Now, Comes with Music is an unlimited download service. Take note, however, that this is not a golden ticket to all the available services on the Nokia Music Store. One good example is the unlimited streaming service, which is not part of the Comes with Music package. So why would you want an unlimited streaming service, when you can just download non-stop with no worries of being overcharged? Some might factor storage space as a possible reason, and we kind of agree on that point. However, give or take some, you will still be in a win-win situation since you are able to have free reign over all the available music tracks on the Nokia Music Store. There are some other minute differences between purchasing music ala carte style and the Comes with Music service, so here's the breakdown:

Great, now you have both a swanky new UI, and a wide (and we do mean, really wide) selection of music tracks for you to groove to on your 5800 XpressMusic. Here comes the critical question: how does the device perform when you have this wonderful suite of services? The answer, coming right up in our Performance page.

Dancing the Night Away

To enjoy all the services, one must remember that you can only do as much as the device is able to support. So, can the 5800 XpressMusic keep the party going with its 1320mAh battery? We did our usual battery test to check on its stamina, and to give you a better gauge, we took a look at two other devices with similar capacities, the HTC Touch HD and Sony Ericsson Xperia X1.

The biggest question one might ask, is why are we comparing this against Windows Mobile devices, and more specifically, why these two? What all these three devices have in common are their overall functionality and market segmentation as they are aimed at heavy multimedia-centric usage. Do they have a 3.5mm audio jack? Check. A display screen size that's 3-inches or more? Check. With these three devices sharing similar traits to perform on the multimedia level, this comparison would give you a better gauge of what you might prefer when it comes to considering your options. We conducted the tests using a standard MP4 file format running at 24FPS that's suitable for both Symbian S60 and Windows Mobile devices, and ran the tests with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth activated. The screen brightness and volume is left at 100% with a earphone plugged into the device as a control environment.

As evident from the results, the Xperia X1 will have the advantage over both the 5800 XpressMusic and the Touch HD in terms of battery stamina. As always, remember that screen size plays a huge factor when it comes to a device's mileage. With a combination of both a lower battery capacity and a slightly larger 3.2-inch display, the 5800 XpressMusic did perform sufficiently well at 182 minutes of battery life. Taking the battery life into the equation, we explored the portability index of all three devices. With a lighter body and similar volume to both devices, the 5800 XpressMusic naturally scored higher on the portability index. You might get less mileage out of the 5800 xpressMusic, but factor in the light weight and compactness of the device, and you get a better overall experience.

Do note that this is an intensive test done on the battery. With a normal usage pattern that mixes messaging, phone calls, the occasional data connection via Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or HSDPA and its primary function - music playback, we did get up to slightly more than a day's worth of usage out of the device.

Talking about music playback, there's a whole lot to mention about the 5800 XpressMusic's audio delivery. Cycling through a few tracks from the Nokia Music Store (thanks to the unlimited Comes with Music service), we found adequate audio fidelity on the device. Listening to Jason Mraz's "We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things", we can safely say that this music device is able to bring out Jason's voice to a crisp and clear tone. Bass tracks are adequately brought out on the accompanying earphones too, though it would probably sound better with the phone's "Bass booster" equalizer settings.

Sticking to its default equalizer setting once more, we tested out its stereo speakers to gauge its performance. Whilst the audio clarity is of no issue, there was a tinny quality to the music tracks. This was more prominent on higher tone tracks such as Guns 'n' Roses "Sweet Child of Mine", and there was a slight hollow echo following the speakers. However, switching back to the bundled earphones rectified the issue, so do stick with the private confines of your earphones instead of the speaker for this device.

Navigating the Symbian S60 V5.0 UI on the 5800 XpressMusic is somewhat of a mixed experience. Our gave us an inkling of what it means to utilize the various cellular features such as text messaging on future Nokia devices. Now, specific to the 5800 XpressMusic, we had a few bones to pick. Though the device does come with numerous text input methods, we found ourselves sticking to the familiar numeric input. For those of you who have managed to test a live unit at some retail outlets, you would have discovered one other bone to pick: the lack of an auto-rotation to the full QWERTY keyboard in landscape mode. Though the integrated accelerometer does well in rotating the menu to landscape mode, it would have made the experience even better if it was translated onto the input modes. Sadly, that wasn't the case.

Please Don't Stop the Music!

As much as we would like to continue talking about the 5800 XpressMusic and the bundled Comes with Music service, that's about it. You have a music-centric device, delivering above average audio quality and a buffet of music tracks for you to download from the online Nokia Music Store. Sounds too good, right?

Well, not really. There are quite a number of catches to this whole music package. For the device, we do applaud the introduction of the first touchscreen device under Nokia's name. Yes, it comes with a wonderful 3.2-inch screen for you to fondle with your fingers. But due to the resistive nature of its touchscreen display, there are times when you'll experience some input difficulty without the use of your nails or your stylus. The Symbian S60 V5.0 preview also covered a related touch navigation factor: the inconsistency of double tapping for certain menus. These definitely bring the user experience down a notch, but with some practice, you should be able to get used to it.

The Comes with Music service, in our opinion, has a lot of potential, but restricted in many ways. Digital Rights Management is certainly the best way to protect the copyrights of the creative industry, but from a consumer's viewpoint, it hinders the way one enjoys their music. With the layers of restrictions such as a one-to-one lock of the device to your PC, this might not be the best deal for consumers who are frequent device switchers. Of course, if you are a loyal Nokia user, and find solace in keeping your PC up and running on a long term basis, the one year unlimited download service will definitely do wonders to your music collection (for as long as you have the storage capacity to do so).

What it really boils down to for the consumer is the price that comes with the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. Bundling it with the Comes with Music plan should bring the retail price slightly higher, but at the time of publishing, we were unable to ascertain the pricing yet. Fret not though, if you have been keeping a close watch, you would know that the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic will be officially launched in Singapore this Friday, 27th Feb 2009. So before we do get the pricing, check out our previous and learn more about the Comes with Music service, and await the arrival of the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic.

** Updated on 27th February 2009 **

With the phone now officially launched in Singapore on the 27th February, we're finally allowed to reveal the price. Bundling the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic with the Comes with Music plan should bring the retail price slightly higher, and that it did, with a S$798 price tagged to the Comes with Music version.

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