Nokia Rolls Out Tube Touchscreen Handset

Author Gordon Kelly
Published 2nd Oct 2008
Nokia Rolls Out Tube Touchscreen Handset
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Well it had to pop that cherry sometime...

With the formal announcement of the 5800 XpressMusic (the rather disappointing title for the infinitely more excitingly codenamed 'Tube') Nokia has gone all kinds of official on its first - and long overdue - touchscreen handset.


Pitched as a midrange device it nevertheless comes with a raft of impressive features highlights of which include a 3.2in LCD with 640 x 360 native resolution, HSDPA, aGPS, WiFi and - just squeezing in via its Carl Zeiss optics - a 3.2MP camera capable of video recording.

Further good news also comes in the shape of Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP that all important 3.5mm headphone jack while talk time lasts up to nine hours, with music playback a substantial 35 hours (obviously with the likes of Bluetooth, WiFi, etc turned off).


As for negatives, the proportions are rather hefty for a low megapixel, touchscreen handset with a 15.5mm thickness making it inexplicably chunkier than something such as LG's 8MP KC-910 'Renoir' and the onboard memory is a piffling 81MB. Going some what to righting this wrong however is an 8GB microSD HC card which is included in the box and support extends to the format's new 16GB capacity highpoint.

Of course despite all this the key factor for the 5800 will be whether Nokia has done a half decent job in making its first fully finger friendly UI. A stylus is ominously included making me question what nasty surprises might be in store, but with a brand spanking new S60 5th Edition OS at its heart and Nokia's track record of clean interfaces my hopes are high.


The 5800 XpressMusic (please Nokia bring someone in to teach you how to name products) will launch during the somewhat ambiguous 'Q4' timeframe and comes with a reasonably pre-tax €279 price tag unlocked meaning on contract it should be free. A more expensive Comes With Music edition will then follow in Q1.

So a bit of a fatty, but all-in-all highly promising...

Update: And yes, that is a Nokia plectrum you see on the lanyard. Why? Because the 5800 is so in touch with music. Yeah, we sighed too.

Link:
Nokia 5800 XpressMusic Product Page

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Latest 4 of 17 Comments

Have your say: Leave a comment below about this article.

Comment Gordon said on 3rd October 2008

@lifethroughalens - all fair points. Though I would argue Flash memory is ultra cheap now whether native or in card form and personally I'd rather have a nice lump aboard and... more

Comment A. Mohammadlou said on 3rd October 2008

Good news first!!!
and ... The bad news!!!
http://blog.laptopmag.com/hands-on-with-nokia-5800-xpressmusic#more-5334

Comment xbrumster said on 6th October 2008

nokia has done a good job, considering it's the 1st (argubally the 2nd) touch phone they have. still i think iphone is a better product. you can buy many phones out there with... more

Comment lifethroughalens said on 9th October 2008

@ xbrumster '5800 offers free music and basic functions of a phone and that's it'

Are you singing from a different hymn sheet, or what? It has many m... more

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