PureMobile sent us in the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic for a review, the first Symbian OS smartphone with S60 5.0 in it to date. This impressive-looking smartphone looks like a darling touchscreen phone, but is it really? Read on for more.
The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is a quad-GSM/EDGE smartphone, with support for HSDPA at either 900/2100 (EUR/World) or 850/1900 (US/CAN). The version we received for the review is the world version, so we couldn’t test its 3G ability here in the US. The handset sports a 3.2″ 16 million 360×640 touchscreen TFT LCD, a proximity sensor for auto turn-off when you hold it close to your ears, an accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate, VGA video-call camera, 81 MB internal memory, 128 MB SDRAM, an ARM-11 369 MHz CPU, microSDHC slot up to 16 GB, 802.11 b/g WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0, 3.2 MP camera with flash, GPS receiver, stereo FM with RDS, TV out, 3.5mm audio output jack, and stereo speakers.
The box it arrived with had a few nice goodies in it: a hard case with a wrist-wrap hole (case is not belt-compatible though), 3.5mm headphones with detachable remote control, a second stylus, a table stand (so you can watch videos in widescreen mode without having to hold the device), a wrist-wrap, the Li-Ion 1320 mAh battery, a microUSB cable, a charging cable, an 8 GB microSDHC card, and component video-out cables.
The device weighs just 109 gr, and it feels really nice in the palm of the hand. It is less wide than the iPhone or the HTC G1, but around the same height. On the left of the device you will find the SIM and microSDHC slots, on the top the microUSB slot, 3.5mm audio jack, power jack, and on/off button. On the right side there are the volume up/down buttons, the keys lock/unlock slider, and the camera shutter button. On the back side, you will find the stylus securely placed, and the camera. On the front side there’s the speaker, the video-call camera, accept/hangup buttons along with an “open menu” button, and one touch-sensitive “button” that loads a special (and pretty redundant in my opinion) multimedia menu (loads “share online”, videos, music, pictures etc).
The front screen of Symbian S60 5.0 looks a lot like like the previous S60 3.1 screens. If you are wondering where’s S60 4.0, well, it doesn’t exist, because the number 4 is considered bad luck in China, a major market for Nokia. You will find a very nice contacts application, VoIP support, good bluetooth usability with A2DP support, enough theme support, an updated version of their KHTML browser, the usual Nokia Maps GPS app, a powerful email client etc. I won’t go into much description of the software, because it’s basically S60 3.x (which it has been reviewed to death here on OSNews and elsewhere) plus touchscreen ability. I will mention some of the few new things in it though.
There are four ways to input characters in a given S60 5.0 screen: via a floating, mini virtual keyboard, a T9 alphanumeric keyboard, a full screen keyboard (in a rotated screen), or via handwriting recognition (which I found it to be accurate, but slower than just typing). Each time a button, icon, or character is pressed, the phone is slightly vibrating to provide user feedback. The mini virtual keyboard is only usable with a stylus, but the fullscreen keyboard can be used with the thumbs. Unfortunately, it’s not very easy to use, because while it’s supposed to be a thumb-board, it only works well if you use the tip of your fingernail — like a stylus. And even then, it’s not fool proof, it’s very easy to make mistakes, and Nokia does not auto-correct as well as the Apple iPhone does. More over, while there is an extensive support for accented northern European characters, there is no support for Greek in this (Asian) model.
After having used this phone for 2 weeks now, the UI feels a lot like this: “take a non-touchscreen UI, add a touchscreen LCD, profit”. While responsive, there is very little to none optimization to be used with thumbs/fingers, and flow organically from one menu to another. Instead, we get pop-up menus that open by soft-buttons, just like on the non-touchscreen phones! Trying to use that phone without a stylus was near impossible. Scrolling a long list for example, was a nightmare because my finger nail had to aim for a very thin scrollbar line! On top of that, there is no multi-touch support (one of the reasons why I still prefer the iPhone over Android too). I hope that Nokia should at least give for free a screen protector, because most of us will have to use our nails to get the job done. Making it pretty difficult removing the stylus (it requires quite some strength removing it from its slot), will only make more people wanna use the phone with their nails. Overall, the UI did not feel like a modern Palm/Apple/Android kind of organic UI. It felt like a rehashed soft-button dated UI, with lots of added MSG and salt so we don’t taste its age.
The usability of the new version of the browser is a mixed bag. From one side it’s obvious that they tried to make it easier to navigate around pages, but on the other hand, sites like my-symbian.com were extremely slow to scroll around. The phone also was mistaking my efforts to scroll around as clicks — very annoying. I ended up using Opera Mini at the end.
The biggest problem though, is the software compatibility with older applications. Regarding Java apps, the phone ships with a virtual T9 keyboard and controls, so you can use non-touchscreen-aware J2ME apps with it. Unfortunately, except Opera Mini, Google Maps, Gmail and 1-2 more apps, there are no useful J2ME apps out there to speak about (only games). So for native C++ apps, this is the 5th time Nokia does the same mistake and breaks compatibility. Twice with S60, and three times with their N-series Linux internet tablets. They seem to never learn from their mistakes, which is why after 3 years, their S60 3.x platform still has only 600 applications, while the iPhone has thousands in less than a year time, and Android is also in the hundreds (if not a thousand) within a few months too. This whole “oh, it’s hard keeping compatibility” mentality their engineers and managers have, has cost Nokia respect over the years from software houses who now snob the S60 platform, EVEN if it’s the best selling smartphone platform worldwide! No serious developer wants to put up with their constant breakups anymore! Nokia just doesn’t get it that compatibility matters more than their stupid and useless new online song-buying shop. They have this mentality that the non-smartphone manufacturers usually have, that adding superficial features on their phone actually sells. And they go at it, without planning ahead and having a more generic idea of what’s gonna happen 2 or 3 years down the road when Apple, or Google, or whoever else, creates a strong platform with a real future and application base, rather than a freaking toy after another freaking toy. The age of the cellphone being just a gadget, has long passed. People want to do real work with them now, and Nokia cuts us short with their non-existent third party application market. So far, three months after the release of this phone, there are only about 65 third party native apps that work with the 5800 model.
Ok, ok… I will breathe now.
Don’t get me wrong, there are some good things in this phone. The autofocus camera is pretty good, it has enough options (coloring, night mode, exposure, white balance, contrast, sharpness, grid, self-timer, etc). The wide VGA video support quality is pretty good as well (no support for recording via the video-call’s camera though). Speaking of video, the phone has the ability to playback MPEG4-SP, 3GP, h.264 and WMV. The music application is nothing great to speak about, but it works well, and if I may say so, it’s superior to Google’s Android music app. Compared to the iPhone’s though, it doesn’t even rank.
Call quality was top notch, and the TV-out ability was cool too. Audio quality via the headphones was very crisp, without buzzing or other such knuckling problems. The TFT screen was amazingly clear. The best thing about this phone though, is its battery life. The reason why it took me a while to write this review is because I was waiting for its battery to die so I can measure its lifespan. After almost two weeks of normal to low usage, I still have 15% of the battery left! It’s amazing what some handsets can do these days regarding battery life!
Overall, this is a nice multimedia-focused smartphone, but it doesn’t hold a handle to the iPhone. Sure it has a bit better battery life, higher resolution screen (although much smaller screen size), better camera, VoIP SIP, and more Bluetooth profile support than the iPhone, but when you compare the overall usability and user experience you get out of the two, the 5800 doesn’t cut it in the least. Nokia needs to be more serious about software if they want to have a future in this rapidly ever-changing smartphone future. Being a great hardware manufacturer is one thing, but it’s not the only thing that matters anymore. The market has changed, and (my) expectations have changed too.
Rating: 6/10
Thanks for the review, but is a shame you didn’t include a video of the device in action to see how responsive the UI is.
Great Review.
This phone sounded like a ‘meh’ to me with the way they tacked on the touchscreen controls, until I saw the part where they cancelled software compatibility and I thought NOT AGAIN >_>
Seriously, they’ll never build a decent software base like this.
One reason there is less S60 software than people would expect is the nasty certification procedures people have to go through to release S60 software that works on non-cracked S60 phones. It’s not nearly as horrible as the Apple nazis, but still it keeps at least me from making any S60 software.
I disagree about the “Apple nazis”.
Symbian Signed is such a major pain in the arse, compared to that Apple’s solution is the second coming. And I’m an intern working as an S60 developer.
SS costs way more directly:
– Getting and maintaining the publisher ID and the UIDs
– Paying ~$300 for every signing to the test houses
– (Express Signed might ease that a little if you’re in luck)
And indirectly:
– Adhering to the criteria
– Messing with the test houses
– Waiting for the approval can get really long
What do you get for all this work?
A signed package. Good luck taking it to the market.
Don’t worry about missing the boat here.
S60 is a f’in mess anyway.
Not only that, but their Symbian C++ dialect is completely brain dead as well.
I already gave up on it. Sure they are improving the situation, but it still feels worse than using a MS-DOS C++ compiler!
If you compare the productivity one has with Apple or Google’s platform, is also easy to see why not so many software houses develop for S60 any longer.
They completely f**ck it up when they introduced the version 3.0. Everyone was expecting that the new version would finally provide a proper C++ environment, but no. They only changed the APIs and introduced the signed process.
Oh well.
There is always Maemo. With the next version, they are opening all the binary blobs formerly closed in version 4 and previous. It may avoid the very real possibility of a fork and will allow a few long outstanding “features” to be fixed.
…on the new tablets only. Fremantle runs on OMAP3, doesn’t it?
I’m more interested in when Qt will take over and deprecate the whole S60 chaos. Wishful thinking, ain’t it?
they are porting Qt to s60 and symbian. So they still plan on using it. symbian is still a great phone os, it’s just userspace and the c++ dialect that sucks.
Bear in mind that there is a posix compatibility lib for s60 (which the Qt people are also using for their port).
No, the kernel space sucks as well. Symbian fell for the microkernel trap, and actually uses a server for file access (!). Just the fact that they chose the MS-DOS model for their user-visible file system parts (with drive letters and other goodness) at the time when unix model was already well known underlines the need for the operating systems’ long overdue extinction.
What’s good about Symbian is the fact that it makes everything so hard, which leads to more billable developer hours. Kinda like that old C++ hidden motive joke, except it’s not a joke this time…
http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/susan/joke/cpp.htm
The problem saying half a truth is that you may also saying half a lie.
You must sign an application depending of what you want the application to do. There are a lot of applications that do not need to be signed and you don’t have to pay nothing to Symbian or a certification house.
Also, if you want/must certificate, you have a set of conditions you must comply, not some vague ideas.
I think the situation is much better than with Apple in this subject (there are other questions in which Symbian must learn from Apple) in which Apple can block you for completely arbitrary reasons that you discover when you are not allowed to publish your application.
Half-truths? From Apple apologists? Say it ain’t so!
You’re right, sorry about that. You don’t have to sign games and to-do lists
However, I’m far from being an Apple fanatic. Rather a masochistic bastard.
I’ve worked on three bigger projects up to now, all of them needed higher capabilities, no way around that. Even for launching that friggin’ browser standalone (and that’s not even documented).
Another simple example: the Location Framework. Come on.
Don’t tell me it’s user grantable in Feature Pack 2.
It is, but that doesn’t help us trying to support all the phones out there.
The criteria are clear if you’re developing a simple application, and if I weren’t bound by an NDA, I could tell you stories where it gets so messy, even the guys at Symbian Signed hesitated trying to help me.
And it wasn’t my fault, nor the language barrier.
Edited 2009-02-06 21:19 UTC
I’ve also done Symbian Signed apps and I agree with you that it has its problems. Maybe I’ve been lucky or te applications that I’ve worked on were less complicated than yours but it seems that my experiences (not without problems) have not been as expensive or traumatic as yours.
In the other hand, with Apple, I’m not allowed to write one of the applications (also related with GPS) because Apple does not want. I think that this is worse that the Symbian pre-FP2 status
And in another one an Apple representative told me that he thought the user interface was not going to be approved. It seems that they are the only that can decide how an application can behave.
I’m really surprised with your touch-screen experience. I have the phone around 3 weeks and have used the stylus only when I want to make browsing a better experience.
Taking into account that I have bigger fingers as a man, I find it quite easy to use the scrollbars and the navigation in general.
I have to agree though that the UI needs a bit more polishing in order to become more ‘touchy’. Also the browser isn’t up to the expectation. I eagerly wait Opera 9.5 for symbian to come!
Regarding the language support, you have the Asian model therefore no Greek, but even then you can use a tool to flash whatever firmware you want. The Greek firmware has even Greek handwriting support!!!
My verdict is that this phone is best value for its money (320 Euros in Greece with an 8GB microSD in the box).
PS. Don’t forget that it is branded as Music phone and has by far the best speakers in a phone I’ve ever heard.
>Regarding the language support, you have the Asian model therefore no Greek,
You missed my point in that sentence. In this Asian version, there is northern european support (and some characters that look like Turkish), not just plain english. There are a variety of accented characters available, most asian phones don’t have support for such characters. So my problem is, that they added all that support, but they didn’t also add Greek. Either support most of Europe or don’t.
>but even then you can use a tool to flash whatever firmware you want.
No, this is not possible with the S60 5.0 firmwares. The freeware utility that changes the product code does not work.
Edited 2009-02-06 19:57 UTC
I don’t undestand why you expect a language spoken by 20m people to be supported in the Asian version.
Regarding the flashing procedure, phoenix supports 5800 and you can flash the phone with the firmware/variant you want.
Anyway, my reply was mainly concentrated in your other findings and not the ones above.
If you are talking about how “easy” is to use your fingers, then you have never used a iPod or iPhone or Android phone (and soon the Palm Pre). The 5800 is terrible in finger usability compared to the above products.
Hehe, I have an iphone 3g, a se x1, a 5800, a n800 and in general about a dozen touch screen devices.
I will agree that the iphone is a step higher in usability because of the capacitive screen but have you tried using it with gloves on?
Maybe you tested an early 5800 but the one I have certainly is very usable just by using your fingers.
No, it’s not an early build. It’s just not as usable as the iphone in touchscreen support. There is no multitouch. And most importantly, I can’t “fling”, I have to use the thin scrollbar. And the full screen keyboard is a disgrace. It expects thin nails to type correctly, while in the iphone i can use the tip of my finger and it gets it right.
Sorry, but I won’t change on this. The 5800 touchscreen support is very sub par compared to the iphone/ipod.
Its easy to use with just fingers, I did have some problems the first day but since that, I use my fingers all the time except when I use Opera.
Resistive and Capacitive both has there strengths and weakness
Resistive:
+It response to what ever you poke it with
-transparency
Capacitive
+transparency
-only responds only to fingers
-typos are easy
I know many who would like to use a stylus with there Ipod or Iphone. I was not that impressed by the Iphone its kinda slow and old tech. But I did get a Ipod Touch but I tend to get tons of typos that I don’t get on the 5800. Android and pre is the only thing I have not used yet. I would say that Samsung or HTC/SE Windows mobile phones has the worst finger usability, they tend to ignore most movements that I do on the screen.
Sorry, but in this day and age, I expect nothing less than a capasitive LCD. And typos are not easy, I type very fast and accurately with my iPhone and iPod Touch.
I have done the same and I had mine for 5 weeks. The stylus is good to have with Opera mini its the only app I use the stylus for.
I like the UI but it could use some more polishing, but not much.
And there seems to be a lot of interesting software out there some at Nokias 5800 pages and s60 and mosh just for the 5800 XM.
As value for money (312 € in Finland) it gets a 9.5+, and it got better sound and screen the rest. And the battery life is great it last around a week.