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Home » Mobile & GPS » Mobile Phone » Nokia 5800 XpressMusic » Video

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic video review

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A fat phone with plastic casing, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic doesn't set the world alight with its physical design nor its resistive touchscreen. It does better with its range of features - there's a version of the BBC iPlayer, a voice recorder, RealPlayer, FM radio and a couple of games. There are also useful stereo speakers that produce a decent volume and quality of music. It's not that the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is a particularly poor phone but it struggles to compete with its superior touchscreen rivals such as the iPhone. Read full review

Overall

8/10

Write your own review

By Sandra Vogel
Reviewed 13 February 2009
Updated 26 May 2011

Price as reviewed

free/subscription

  • Review
    • 1: Nokia 5800 XpressMusic
    • 2: Nokia 5800 XpressMusic
    • 3: Nokia 5800 XpressMusic
    • 4: Nokia 5800 XpressMusic - Test Shots
  • Video Review
  • User Reviews
  • Comments
  • Specs
  • 9 Photos
  • Mobile Deals
  • Reviewed by Sandra Vogel
  • 13 February 2009
Read the full Nokia 5800 XpressMusic review
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Awards

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic details

Design
8/10
Features
9/10
Usability
8/10
Value
8/10
Overall
8/10

Pros & Cons

Pros

  • Good choice of software
  • Very good accelerometer
  • Touch-screen

Cons

  • Disappointing camera
  • Sluggish
  • Low grade plastic casing

Price as reviewed

free/subscription

Manufacturer

Nokia

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Rohit 1

6:33 AM on 13 February, 2009

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Nokia has finally boarded the touchscreen wagon!! Very credible effort though.. But being an Music phone, does the sound quality match with that of the Sony-Ericcson walkman brand phones?

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Trevor Totten

9:15 AM on 13 February, 2009

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I'm sold. I'm due an upgrade on my contract, and I've been waiting for a review from you guys. My brother has one, and recommended it, but I don't trust him as much as TrustedReviews! I've always had Nokias, but changed to Sony Ericsson and their W850i, which isn't bad, but I just prefer Nokias. I'm sure they'll be delighted to hear i'm coming back to them!

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lifethroughalens

2:40 PM on 13 February, 2009

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Um, a bit of a light review I thought?





I've had one for a week now and can say that i'm 50/50 on it. It does require a lot of personalisation of the menu system for it to flow better and there are more bugs with the software than you can shake a stick at. I've lost count of the number of hard and soft resets and firmware / software installs i've done!





Browsers (opera & S60 one) crash all the time with intensive use, I have so many niggles with the UI that I literally can't write them all down here because i'd be here until 5pm! Needless to say - it ain't no iPhone killer! Browsing busy web pages is a pain since scrolling is sooo difficult to do without accidentally selecting a hyperlink by mistake...Aghhhh!





The build quality is generally good, but mine is falling apart after only 6 days of 7 days of use, the front raised bit of plastic around the edge of the front of the phone has started to come off at one corner. It has had no damage done to it, it just appears that the manufacture was faulty. I hope Nokia will fix this FOC.





Also this front lip, the raise plastic edge around the screen, is a nightmare for trapping dust and grit, as are the buttons at the bottom. I can see this causing problems after a while.





The camera is diabolical. End of.





The speakers and music side of things are very good.





Screen sensitivity is poor - you need to have long nails and tiny fingers for this handset to make sense. If you have sausages for fingers, you'll be throwing this against the wall in no time. I have to use the Stylus all the time, which I don't mind but as Sandra points out this sort of defeats the point of having a touch interface.





The inconsistency of 1 click or 2 click is driving me mad. I may blend it one day, just because of this annoyance.





And the battery life, i'm finding in real life, isn't as good as reported. It will just about show a full 100min movie in mp4 format at 3/4 light with headphones, before it dies.





Battery life on the music front does appear a lot better, only using a couple of bars in 5 hours playing to external speakers. Sound quality is very good for a phone. On standby, i'm sure it will last for 10 days easily...if you don't touch it, or breath on it. Seems like a silly, pointless, commonly quoted measure.





As for it being a phone, well it's good! Call quality is very good, signal and sound wise, in fact I get a better signal from this that I do with my E51 in the same areas.





Using the phone for writing lengthy emails, is a pain...mainly due to the various text input methods being too small for me. Either you have big letter keys and a tiny window to see the text you're inputting or the direct opposite problem. Also I really miss the momentum scrolling (where it continues to scroll depending on the speed of your swipe) from the iPhone. (Although i'm not an iPhone fan, I do appreciate the good aspects)





It does play .flv files directly without any conversion required...however, recently i'm finding this to be a poor gimmick since it is always crashing, dropping frames and generally misbehaving. More software issues.





MP4 playback is very good, use mediacoder to convert your files to the native format and films look great. However, every 10 minutes or so the screen freezes and it takes a few seconds for everything to catch up. Again, more software issues.





Basically, I think that this could be an excellent handset in about 6 months time when Nokia have finished using people like me as guinea pigs for their (poor) firmware and software. They have had long enough to test this in-house, and I feel they should have done a much better job on the first FW releases.





None of the hardware or software is new technology, but as a package it is still very compelling because you know that when nokia finally get the software right and iron out all these bugs, it'll be a corker of a handset.





A heavily upgraded new version of software has just been release on the NSU to owners of the blue handsets in various EU countries and, in spite of reports of new issues precipitated by this, it does sound promising. Owners of UK Red non-branded handsets will have to wait for this FW (V 20.0.012), maybe a few weeks...check the forums.





Also, i'm happy to report that the aGPS is actually worth having in this handset and is more responsive than my stand alone tomtom unit, which amazed me. I have managed to install TomTom software on to my 5800, but you need a BT keyboard to work it! I hope this is updated and available legitimately, soon.





Until then, i've gone back to using my E51 as my main phone, when I get the new FW uploaded, i'll try again.





Any questions, feel free...

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Pbryanw

7:10 PM on 13 February, 2009

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@lifethroughalens - your post was almost as long as TR's review - shame they don't have user reviews on this site.

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Jay4d0

9:52 PM on 14 February, 2009

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I say do video review as it is an important pivotal product in nokias history.

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Jay4d0

11:06 PM on 14 February, 2009

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This is a little off topic but can you say in your opinion which are the three best quality camera phones of the time are? just I am looking for a really deacent camera phone

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Ed

8:27 AM on 18 February, 2009

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@Jay





I requested this handset a while back and was obviously not first on their list. I'll check back and hopefully get a video done in the next couple of weeks.





As for camera phones, well there's the Samsung Pixon, Samsung Innov8, Sony Ericsson C905, and LG Renoir. The Renoir is a pretty slick handset with full touch screen interface and has a cool manual focus feature where you just press the part of the touch screen that you want it to focus on and it does so. Otherwise I quite like the C905. Build quality is definitely a cut above the rest, the keypad is really nice to type on and its on a par with the rest in most respects.

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P1J2H3

3:32 PM on 24 February, 2009

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I agree that the review could have been better. I like to know the problems are before I buy - thank you lifethroughalens!





I ordered one today, but before I read this review. I'm now having my doubts!





I read on the s60 forum that you only need a bluetooth keyboard to install Tomtom sw. I didn't realise that you need the keyboard the whole time! I'm sure some clever person will sort this issue out though.

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Malcy

11:51 PM on 11 March, 2009

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P1J2H3, the review by lifethroughalens is only one experience. I have had this phone for several weeks now and have suffered none of the crashes needs to reset or video glitches that he/she has. I have to say that battery life is excellent too. Areas that are not so good are the radio which isn't too sensitive, the camera (but as a photographer I would use a dedicated camera for anything serious anyway) and the one click or two clicks thing. Physically there have been no problems, though I agree that sometimes bits of dust get stuck under the edge of the display.





At the end of the day this was never meant to be an 'iPhone killer', the pricing shows that apart from anything else, the N97 will be the first serious attempt at iPhone killing. Several friends have the 5800 and are very pleased with it.

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PaulT1

11:11 AM on 13 March, 2009

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Like most reviews on most phones the reviewers bang on about all the goodies but never mention how the thing works as a phone which, surely, is the main reason for having one!

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