The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is the first proper touchscreen handset from Nokia, and has been made famous by the numerous design leaks and product placement. Finally getting our hands on what was once known as 'the Tube', we quickly discovered that this handset was not quite the huge revolution we expected, but is a decent music phone nonetheless. Read on for our thoughts!

Design:

The Nokia 5800 is unmistakably a touchscreen phone, with a very familiar rectangular design. The oddity comes in the form of the handset being in almost a 'widescreen' 16:9 ratio, making the 5800 look conspicuously narrow.

Nevertheless, it manages to still look like a Nokia with the recognisable keys and sturdy yet not luxurious build quality. The handset differs in form, as the 5800 is said to be easily usable one-handed, and the form factor certainly enforces this assumption. With a height of 111mm, 51.7mm width and 15.5mm depth, the 5800 XpressMusic is a tad less lithe than many similar devices, but the lack of heft (only 109g) more than makes up for it.

The immediate reaction to the screen of the handset once the 5800 was unboxed was "why is it sunken into the body?" There is about a quarter of an inch of a raised frame around the device, making it an easy home for any dirt and dust, which it duly began to collect immediately.

Above and below the 5800's screen is a little more than usual, the 'call' 'end' and 'menu' buttons which have become a touch phone staple below, whilst a quick-access media button hides out just above next to theXpressMusic logo.

A 3.5mm audio jack is on the top (where it should be!), and a power button and USB port flank it on either side. The 5800 continues the strange tradition of having the volume bar on the right side, a strange change after getting used to the profusion of phones placing it on the left, but we forgive them! A camera key and phone lock switch accompany the volume switch.

The stylus hides at the bottom left side of the device, close to one of those little eyelets for putting trinkets through. However, this phone already comes with a music related curio to hang off the end of the device, a clear blue (or red) plectrum shaped stylus, which can be used instead of the standard one if feeling a little funky.

Features:

Moving to the back of the 5800 XpressMusic gives the opportunity to look at the 3 megapixel camera. With a dual-LED flash and autofocus, we expected the camera to be good but not great. Our expectations were largely on the money, as pictures from the handset were clear but unremarkable. When the images taken look bad on the phone, let alone scaled up to the PC, then you know it is a camera for pleasure rather than business.

Anyway, we're here for the touchscreen and the 3.2" offering on the 5800 doesn't disappoint on the whole. The high resolution screen offers a very bright and distinct image, but one which was strangely tough to see when outside. The text was tougher to read, and the media playback was disappointingly subject to blurring during faster moving video. Little things like using the phone in landscape only worked when tilting it one way and not the other, giving the lefties a bit of a hard time, were strange oversights for a phone that took so long to come to market.

Also, as it is a plastic resistive touchscreen rather than the more posh glass capacitive display offered on phones the iPhone and Omnia HD, the responsiveness seems a little 'woolly' leading to occasions of repeated presses to register input. The extra pressure required does sometimes mess up the image on the display too, in a similar fashion to putting a magnet near a television. Be careful not to press too hard, or just use the stylus/plectrum for the best results!

Actually using the phone feels straight up Nokia. The Symbian S60 operating system might be bumped up to version 5 to handle touch, but aside from that it is business as usual. The menu layout, the options, even the fonts are very retro. In the midst of all of these impressive new user interface design directions others are taking (widgets, S-Class etc.) it is comforting to see the same old Nokia icons and menus.

Perhaps if you are very familiar with the Nokia layout, this is a good thing for you, but it beggars the question 'why is touch any better than buttons for this phone?' The answer is not clear. Everything requires double-taps rather than slick swipes or drags, and the experience feels a bit like using an older handset than it is.

The shortcut button at the top of the screen is cool, it feels like it should not be touch, but pressing it rolls out a menu of quick shortcuts to pictures, music and videos.

Being an XpressMusic phone, media - primarily audio - is something given a lot of attention on the 5800. The menus, however are strangely unintuitive, with a browser-style scroll bar to the side of named lists as opposed to dragging on the iPhone. It makes searching fiddly, and in some people's cases, needing of the stylus as their fingers do not fit in the edges of the screen. Add that to the recessed screen making the edges tough to get to in the first place, and the user experience becomes a tad less than friendly.

Where is Comes With Music also? The perfect manufacturer with the ideal platform for their 'all-you-can-eat' download service, and they missed te release window. The two services are destined to be available together, and with word that current Nokia owners cannot sign up after buying the phone makes Comes With Muisc a real missed opportunity.

It is good then, that music playback is very impressive. The wide range of audio formats supported meant little cause for converting content to go on the 5800. Video was a different matter, with it failing to support the most popular formats. Even after conversion, picture quality was a little grainy and blurry during fast paced action sequences, but it handles vivid colours well. The Dark Knight impressed, with darks being handled and the staged action clear almost throughout, but Kill Bill became a mass of pixelated dots during the first fight against Vivica Fox.

8GB of memory in-built eases the woes though, as most content runs fine and you will have plenty of other things to look at!

Calling / Connectivity:

The phonebook is robust, giving the opportunity to fill in all manner of data for everyone, handily avoiding repeat entries in your contacts list! The keypad for making phonecalls is suitably huge, so even the slightly slow 5800 knows what number you're dialling with ease. Another cool feature is silencing calls by turning the phone over. Gimmicky, but also cool.

Texting and e-mails is an embarrassment of riches, with plenty of compensation for the Nokia 5800 not having a physical keyboard. You can text by the traditional alphanumeric predictive style, rotating the 5800 gives up a full QWERTY, and there is even a halfway-house between the two, where teeny tiny keys live to be pressed with the stylus but enable users to see their entire message onscreen. Even handwriting recognition is available, which is not much better than it ever was... All practical solutions in their own way, all not quite as good as using a physical keyboard but pretty close!

Call quality was fine on the demo handset, but there has been many issues reported with both reception and the earpiece loudspeaker in the 5800. All of these have been ironed out however, so any Nokia 5800 available at the moment has hopefully been cured of these ills. Also, Nokia shops are taking them in and happily fixing any that had problems. Be careful buying older ones from other retailers and online swapshops, mind!

Connectivity is pretty impressive, with wi-fi support, and v2.0 Bluetooth and USB.

Verdict:

A bit of a case of style of substance, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is great to look at, good to listen to music with, but only a bit better than mid range as a touch phone. It is important to remember that this is only a mid-range phone, not an iPhone competitor, so it is unfair to compare the two. What the 5800 does, it does to a good standard, but it seems like only a dry run for the next wave of Nokia touch phones rather coming in with a bang.

However, the kids love it and it is bound to sell loads as time goes on.