The "Freeola Customer Forum" forum, which includes Retro Game Reviews, has been archived and is now read-only. You cannot post here or create a new thread or review on this forum.
I recently decided to sell on my Windows Mobile PDA (an aging O2 XDA Exec) because it was just too slow and old to the things I wanted it to do. Thanks to CEX I could get a decent trade in towards another phone, but it was a tough decision regarding which one to get.
The iPhone was far too expensive and some of the Smartphones were still too sluggish, particularly the Windows Mobile ones. In the end, and after reading a shed load of reviews, I went for the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic phone.
Small Screen Presentation
The first thing that grabs you is that the 52mm screen is quite a bit smaller than similar phones like the iPhone. But after turning it on this seems irrelevant as the high quality (640x360) screen shines clearly. The phone is one of the growing number of touchscreen phones, it has both a stylus and a plectrum shaped dongle which hangs from the side on a wrist strap to navigate, but you can also use your finger. At times the screen does need more of a push to register, but the feedback makes it easy to tell that you’ve pressed the icon or button properly.
Picture Perfect
The 3.2 Megapixel camera doesn’t seem like much until you see it also has a Carl Zeiss lens, which makes all the difference to quality. It takes pretty clear pictures in full light and the bright LED flash even makes for some fairly ok night shots, though no phone I tested seemed to get them completely right.
Video, too, is pretty good and can use the memory card as well as on board memory, the video and pictures can then be output to the TV via the cable included, as well as edited with the phones own editing software.
Sounds Good
The XpressMusic badge isn’t just a name, it means that this can be used as a fully fledged MP3 player and has a matching online store which you can access from the phone. With some contracts you can get ‘comes with music’ which allows free music downloads, but I got 5 free tracks just for signing up. Downloading is slow on 3G though, so best to wait until you’re in a Wi-Fi area to downloads the tracks you’ve bought.
There is support for 16GB and 32GB Micro SD cards which can be easily slotted in the side of the phone to store all your songs/
The sound quality is really good and the navigation of the music menus is simple and intuitive. Random playback, bass boost and a number of other features can be set, plus the phone has 2 beefy speakers on the side which actually pump out some good sounds.
The FM radio, however, seems to have a few problems on the bus where my old MP3 player managed to pick up the signal pretty well. An RDS and Auto Tune option has been added since the phone came out and is available on the most recent firmware.
Apply This
The Ovi application store is basically a rival to the iPod App store and contains lots of free and paid for gadgets and games to get your teeth into. Games like Asphalt racing and Labyrinth use the accelometer to steer, which is interesting and pretty tricky to get used to.
There are more applications being added all the time and the Symbian Operating System (S60 V5) is open for anyone to build a new application.
Find me!
GPS and A-GPS are both included on the Nokia 5800 too, with Ovi Maps coming as standard and a 3 month trial for the route finding software for those who haven’t bought it on contract. It works really well and updates pretty fast, plus has easily downloadable maps for most countries.
The useful thing about Ovi Maps is that you can have a week, month or similar period without having to pay for the whole year, very useful if you’re going somewhere on holiday and want to take your Nokia for GPS.
In addition, the GPS works with 3rd party applications like Google Maps, Tomtom and Garmin, but I’m impressed enough to stick with Ovi maps for now.
Online on the Move
The built in internet browser is fast and efficient, using the accelometer to go to full screen when flipped sideways. You can use Wi-Fi or 3G to connect wherever you are and the touch based system makes it easy to scroll through web pages.
Overall Impression
The Nokia 5800 is a great phone. It may not have quite the flair of the iPhone and the touchscreen isn’t quite as responsive, but at under half the price (£199 on PAYG and free on most contracts) it’s a really good option for someone looking for a full multimedia phone that can do internet and photos as well.
The iPhone was far too expensive and some of the Smartphones were still too sluggish, particularly the Windows Mobile ones. In the end, and after reading a shed load of reviews, I went for the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic phone.
Small Screen Presentation
The first thing that grabs you is that the 52mm screen is quite a bit smaller than similar phones like the iPhone. But after turning it on this seems irrelevant as the high quality (640x360) screen shines clearly. The phone is one of the growing number of touchscreen phones, it has both a stylus and a plectrum shaped dongle which hangs from the side on a wrist strap to navigate, but you can also use your finger. At times the screen does need more of a push to register, but the feedback makes it easy to tell that you’ve pressed the icon or button properly.
Picture Perfect
The 3.2 Megapixel camera doesn’t seem like much until you see it also has a Carl Zeiss lens, which makes all the difference to quality. It takes pretty clear pictures in full light and the bright LED flash even makes for some fairly ok night shots, though no phone I tested seemed to get them completely right.
Video, too, is pretty good and can use the memory card as well as on board memory, the video and pictures can then be output to the TV via the cable included, as well as edited with the phones own editing software.
Sounds Good
The XpressMusic badge isn’t just a name, it means that this can be used as a fully fledged MP3 player and has a matching online store which you can access from the phone. With some contracts you can get ‘comes with music’ which allows free music downloads, but I got 5 free tracks just for signing up. Downloading is slow on 3G though, so best to wait until you’re in a Wi-Fi area to downloads the tracks you’ve bought.
There is support for 16GB and 32GB Micro SD cards which can be easily slotted in the side of the phone to store all your songs/
The sound quality is really good and the navigation of the music menus is simple and intuitive. Random playback, bass boost and a number of other features can be set, plus the phone has 2 beefy speakers on the side which actually pump out some good sounds.
The FM radio, however, seems to have a few problems on the bus where my old MP3 player managed to pick up the signal pretty well. An RDS and Auto Tune option has been added since the phone came out and is available on the most recent firmware.
Apply This
The Ovi application store is basically a rival to the iPod App store and contains lots of free and paid for gadgets and games to get your teeth into. Games like Asphalt racing and Labyrinth use the accelometer to steer, which is interesting and pretty tricky to get used to.
There are more applications being added all the time and the Symbian Operating System (S60 V5) is open for anyone to build a new application.
Find me!
GPS and A-GPS are both included on the Nokia 5800 too, with Ovi Maps coming as standard and a 3 month trial for the route finding software for those who haven’t bought it on contract. It works really well and updates pretty fast, plus has easily downloadable maps for most countries.
The useful thing about Ovi Maps is that you can have a week, month or similar period without having to pay for the whole year, very useful if you’re going somewhere on holiday and want to take your Nokia for GPS.
In addition, the GPS works with 3rd party applications like Google Maps, Tomtom and Garmin, but I’m impressed enough to stick with Ovi maps for now.
Online on the Move
The built in internet browser is fast and efficient, using the accelometer to go to full screen when flipped sideways. You can use Wi-Fi or 3G to connect wherever you are and the touch based system makes it easy to scroll through web pages.
Overall Impression
The Nokia 5800 is a great phone. It may not have quite the flair of the iPhone and the touchscreen isn’t quite as responsive, but at under half the price (£199 on PAYG and free on most contracts) it’s a really good option for someone looking for a full multimedia phone that can do internet and photos as well.
There have been no replies to this thread yet.
I recently decided to sell on my Windows Mobile PDA (an aging O2 XDA Exec) because it was just too slow and old to the things I wanted it to do. Thanks to CEX I could get a decent trade in towards another phone, but it was a tough decision regarding which one to get.
The iPhone was far too expensive and some of the Smartphones were still too sluggish, particularly the Windows Mobile ones. In the end, and after reading a shed load of reviews, I went for the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic phone.
Small Screen Presentation
The first thing that grabs you is that the 52mm screen is quite a bit smaller than similar phones like the iPhone. But after turning it on this seems irrelevant as the high quality (640x360) screen shines clearly. The phone is one of the growing number of touchscreen phones, it has both a stylus and a plectrum shaped dongle which hangs from the side on a wrist strap to navigate, but you can also use your finger. At times the screen does need more of a push to register, but the feedback makes it easy to tell that you’ve pressed the icon or button properly.
Picture Perfect
The 3.2 Megapixel camera doesn’t seem like much until you see it also has a Carl Zeiss lens, which makes all the difference to quality. It takes pretty clear pictures in full light and the bright LED flash even makes for some fairly ok night shots, though no phone I tested seemed to get them completely right.
Video, too, is pretty good and can use the memory card as well as on board memory, the video and pictures can then be output to the TV via the cable included, as well as edited with the phones own editing software.
Sounds Good
The XpressMusic badge isn’t just a name, it means that this can be used as a fully fledged MP3 player and has a matching online store which you can access from the phone. With some contracts you can get ‘comes with music’ which allows free music downloads, but I got 5 free tracks just for signing up. Downloading is slow on 3G though, so best to wait until you’re in a Wi-Fi area to downloads the tracks you’ve bought.
There is support for 16GB and 32GB Micro SD cards which can be easily slotted in the side of the phone to store all your songs/
The sound quality is really good and the navigation of the music menus is simple and intuitive. Random playback, bass boost and a number of other features can be set, plus the phone has 2 beefy speakers on the side which actually pump out some good sounds.
The FM radio, however, seems to have a few problems on the bus where my old MP3 player managed to pick up the signal pretty well. An RDS and Auto Tune option has been added since the phone came out and is available on the most recent firmware.
Apply This
The Ovi application store is basically a rival to the iPod App store and contains lots of free and paid for gadgets and games to get your teeth into. Games like Asphalt racing and Labyrinth use the accelometer to steer, which is interesting and pretty tricky to get used to.
There are more applications being added all the time and the Symbian Operating System (S60 V5) is open for anyone to build a new application.
Find me!
GPS and A-GPS are both included on the Nokia 5800 too, with Ovi Maps coming as standard and a 3 month trial for the route finding software for those who haven’t bought it on contract. It works really well and updates pretty fast, plus has easily downloadable maps for most countries.
The useful thing about Ovi Maps is that you can have a week, month or similar period without having to pay for the whole year, very useful if you’re going somewhere on holiday and want to take your Nokia for GPS.
In addition, the GPS works with 3rd party applications like Google Maps, Tomtom and Garmin, but I’m impressed enough to stick with Ovi maps for now.
Online on the Move
The built in internet browser is fast and efficient, using the accelometer to go to full screen when flipped sideways. You can use Wi-Fi or 3G to connect wherever you are and the touch based system makes it easy to scroll through web pages.
Overall Impression
The Nokia 5800 is a great phone. It may not have quite the flair of the iPhone and the touchscreen isn’t quite as responsive, but at under half the price (£199 on PAYG and free on most contracts) it’s a really good option for someone looking for a full multimedia phone that can do internet and photos as well.
The iPhone was far too expensive and some of the Smartphones were still too sluggish, particularly the Windows Mobile ones. In the end, and after reading a shed load of reviews, I went for the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic phone.
Small Screen Presentation
The first thing that grabs you is that the 52mm screen is quite a bit smaller than similar phones like the iPhone. But after turning it on this seems irrelevant as the high quality (640x360) screen shines clearly. The phone is one of the growing number of touchscreen phones, it has both a stylus and a plectrum shaped dongle which hangs from the side on a wrist strap to navigate, but you can also use your finger. At times the screen does need more of a push to register, but the feedback makes it easy to tell that you’ve pressed the icon or button properly.
Picture Perfect
The 3.2 Megapixel camera doesn’t seem like much until you see it also has a Carl Zeiss lens, which makes all the difference to quality. It takes pretty clear pictures in full light and the bright LED flash even makes for some fairly ok night shots, though no phone I tested seemed to get them completely right.
Video, too, is pretty good and can use the memory card as well as on board memory, the video and pictures can then be output to the TV via the cable included, as well as edited with the phones own editing software.
Sounds Good
The XpressMusic badge isn’t just a name, it means that this can be used as a fully fledged MP3 player and has a matching online store which you can access from the phone. With some contracts you can get ‘comes with music’ which allows free music downloads, but I got 5 free tracks just for signing up. Downloading is slow on 3G though, so best to wait until you’re in a Wi-Fi area to downloads the tracks you’ve bought.
There is support for 16GB and 32GB Micro SD cards which can be easily slotted in the side of the phone to store all your songs/
The sound quality is really good and the navigation of the music menus is simple and intuitive. Random playback, bass boost and a number of other features can be set, plus the phone has 2 beefy speakers on the side which actually pump out some good sounds.
The FM radio, however, seems to have a few problems on the bus where my old MP3 player managed to pick up the signal pretty well. An RDS and Auto Tune option has been added since the phone came out and is available on the most recent firmware.
Apply This
The Ovi application store is basically a rival to the iPod App store and contains lots of free and paid for gadgets and games to get your teeth into. Games like Asphalt racing and Labyrinth use the accelometer to steer, which is interesting and pretty tricky to get used to.
There are more applications being added all the time and the Symbian Operating System (S60 V5) is open for anyone to build a new application.
Find me!
GPS and A-GPS are both included on the Nokia 5800 too, with Ovi Maps coming as standard and a 3 month trial for the route finding software for those who haven’t bought it on contract. It works really well and updates pretty fast, plus has easily downloadable maps for most countries.
The useful thing about Ovi Maps is that you can have a week, month or similar period without having to pay for the whole year, very useful if you’re going somewhere on holiday and want to take your Nokia for GPS.
In addition, the GPS works with 3rd party applications like Google Maps, Tomtom and Garmin, but I’m impressed enough to stick with Ovi maps for now.
Online on the Move
The built in internet browser is fast and efficient, using the accelometer to go to full screen when flipped sideways. You can use Wi-Fi or 3G to connect wherever you are and the touch based system makes it easy to scroll through web pages.
Overall Impression
The Nokia 5800 is a great phone. It may not have quite the flair of the iPhone and the touchscreen isn’t quite as responsive, but at under half the price (£199 on PAYG and free on most contracts) it’s a really good option for someone looking for a full multimedia phone that can do internet and photos as well.