Touchscreen motion sensor just like the Nintendo DS is the new era of mobile phone & entertainment devices. It’s the future! Some of the biggest mobile phone maker such as Nokia, Sony Ericsson & Samsung isn’t going to just sit there and let iphone dominate the market. They want their fair share of pies in the market, thus Nokia follow iphone footsteps and release their very first touchscreen mobile phone namely Nokia 5800 XpressMusic running on the new Symbian s60 5th edition. So what was my first hands on impression on the Nokia 5800? It’s almost a re-creation of iphone, from the touch interface to the very basic number dialing. I wouldn’t deny if you say it’s a clones of iphone, except they left out the two fingers zooming function which seems to be a trademark of iphone. The only downside I can find is the touch interface isn’t as smooth as the iphone.

There is two main reason why you should choose to buy a Nokia 5800 XpressMusic instead of the iphone, because it’s half price cheaper and it gives you more freedom on software. iphone is targeting on middle high class while Nokia 5800 is targeting on middle low class, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad just because it’s cheaper. Nokia 5800 is a pretty solid mobile phone in terms of functions and hardware. It doesn’t skim on the software & hardware either just because it’s cheaper, you get the same iphone funtions PLUS extras! We all know that Apple is more close to its products either the Mac or the new iphone. Everything you do must go through their itunes store which I found it frustrating and unnecessary. But we can’t blame the developer, they want to protect their software from piracy after all. They are out for business not charity. Enough of their business model, let’s take a look at Nokia 5800 specifications.

The overall design is the typical Nokia candy bar dominated by light plastic materials. The build quality is quite good and solid but it doesn’t feel as durable as iphone. So becareful with this baby, one slip and be prepared to send it back to Nokia. It’s more fragile IMO, but of course I did not try to drop on the floor for testing. I just feel like it’d break into half if I drops. On the other hand, my brother iphone is quite solid as it drops quite a few time and you can see a lot of scratches at the back case, and it still running flawlessly. If you ever test for Nokia 5800 durability, do send us an email and let us know your results.

The main screen is a 3.2 inch resistive touch screen which has a resolution of 360×640 pixels. Just for your knowledge, Touchscreens typically use  resistive or capacitive technology. Capacitive screens are more sensitive and work better under sunlight, but only work with your finger. While resistive technology can work with any sharp objects even if you are wearing gloves, but it’s less sensitive. Since it’s less sensitive, you might experience touch not being responsive, but to my surprise, it works better than I expected. I’ve had only a very little instances where my touch did not register. Overall the resistive touchscreen works better than other same model in the market I’ve used before.

At the bottom of the screen, it’s the typical 3 button which are the green send key, the middle white home key and the red cancel key. If you have ever used an iphone before it works exactly the same. When clicked on the middle key the screen will return to the main screen. While the other two key allows you to quickly answer or end a phone calls. On the left hand side of the phone you’ll find two plastic slots for the SIM and microSD memory. On the top of the device, it has a microUSB port, a standard  3.5mm audio/TV-out port and a power button to swtich on/off your phone. Now to the back side of the phone, you’ll see a 3.2 megapixel autofocus camera which are much better than the iphone 2.0 megapixel camera.

The Nokia 5800 has every connectivity you would want for a phone. It’s 3G enabled, including integrated GPS, HSDPA, Bluetooth & WiFi connection.

The 5800 also included all necessary software for you to play movies and music. There’s also a calender, calculator, dictionary, notepad, documents, pdf viewer…etc. Almost every software that you would normally use is in the 5800, and you can also wait for third-party developer to start developing new software for the Nokia 5800. Also Nokia 5800 support flash streaming, it means that you can sit in Mc.Donald using their WiFi service to watch youtube all day long. Just you might be wondering, the browser works the same as in iphone meaning that it’ll be full page HTML just like PC browser. You can view a site by pulling in direction and double click to zoom in. To type in URL or messages, you can use the full QWERTY touch keyboard or handwriting recognition to input your text.

This was the first touchscreen mobile phone attempts by Nokia. It has a lot of potential to grow and offers much more flexibility than an iphone. It’s far from perfect especially on the touch interface, it feels rather clunky when using resources intensive programs and it can be frustrating. Overall, Nokia 5800 is hard to resists if you want a touchscreen phone but can’t afford to buy an iphone. If you are looking to change your current cell phone to a more stylus touchscreen, you can give the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic a serious thought. Otherwise, we recommend you to wait a little longer for more touchscreen model coming out soon by Nokia, Sonic Ericsson, Samsung and LG. At that time, touchscreen technology will be more robust and cheaper. Also you get to choose from a wider range of models & designs. We are looking forward to bring you the review of Nokia N97 when it’s out!