Nokia 5800 Xpress Music - Extras
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The true power of the Tube is in its musical and media capabilities. As if to reinforce this, Nokia has even included a somewhat gimmicky plectrum to write with. Of more obvious utility is the Comes With Music subscription that will be included with some, if not all, versions of the handset. This will entitle the owner to a year or more of unlimited downloads from the Nokia music store, and to keep all the downloaded music at the end of the subscription period. This offer alone is sure to be enough to entice many people to switch to the 5800. As you would expect, the phone handles a full range of media file formats. It also has an 8-band graphic equalizer and built-in FM radio.
Once the music is on the phone it actually sounds surprisingly good, even through the built-in stereo speakers. Obviously these little cones aren’t going to be winning any audiophile awards, but they are amazingly loud and they’re certainly more than an afterthought. Nokia has made some effort to get as reasonable a sound as possible from such a small device, even going as far as including surround sound and a dedicated audio chip. This effort isn’t entirely wasted, as music does sound pretty much like music through the built-in system. Obviously things improve drastically when you connect headphones or, better still, link the handset to a hi-fi for serious quality reproduction.
Equally impressive are the phone’s photo and video capabilities. The Carl Zeiss lens ensures decent image quality, and basic image and video editing facilities are provided. You may not be shooting a Hollywood blockbuster on the Tube, but you can quickly and easily pull together a video for sharing, which is made easy thanks to the included OVI suite which makes moving media between the handset, a PC and the Internet straightforward. One-touch photo sharing on sites such as Flickr and Facebook is also supported.
We were also delighted with the options Nokia has provided for text input. It would have been easy to restrict this to a standard on-screen keyboard and alphanumeric keypad, but the inclusion of handwriting recognition lifts the phone to another level. This, along with two QWERTY keyboards and the alphanumeric pad brings the number of input options to a more-than-reasonable four, which should be enough to keep just about everybody happy. Handwriting recognition and the mini-QWERTY methods are stylus-based, while the other two are controlled by the fingertips rather than with the pads of the fingers. This is a little more awkward, but not devastatingly so, and users should find themselves getting used to it quickly enough.
All in all, the Tube is a well-specified, solidly-built device that is laden with functionality. Unfortunately, as an overall package it disappoints slightly. This is mainly down to its quirky interface and slightly chunky appearance. These are the kind of things that distinguish the truly iconic device from the wannabees.
It’s impossible to imagine Apple coming up with a ground-breaking piece of hardware like the iPhone and then deciding to crowbar in some off-the-shelf software that vaguely fits the requirements. Then again, the iPhone costs almost twice as much as the Tube, and in all probability large numbers of customers will vote with their wallets. And why not? If you’d never seen an iPhone, the Tube would look like the real thing.
Sources:
http://www.engadget.com/2008/10/02/nokia-5800-xpressmusic-hands-on/
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article4869252.ece
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/3358705/Handset-review-Nokia-5800-XpressMusic.html
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