My Nokia 5800 review

Just would like to write a short review of the Nokia 5800 mobile phone, since I’ve been using it for the last 2 weeks.

Let me first explain a little bit my background and my experience with Nokia mobile phones.
I started using Nokia mobile phones more then 10 years ago and have been always switching back and forth between Nokia and Sony Ericsson for 8 years, while the last 3 years I stayed firmly with the N-Series of Nokia.
Started with the N73, then moved to the N82 and now I thought it was time to move to the 5800, as well because of the Touch Screen, Ovi Store and the Ovi services in general.

I’ve been very happy with the N82 and have been using it extensively for the last year and a bit, but now I’ve passed it to my wife.

So when I obtained the 5800 I was really happy, the design is nice and as well the screen is a big advantage.
Furthermore I was really interested in the new menu system, as it has many more optimisations in comparison with my N82.

Sync
So the first day I was all happy to try out and to sync the new bad boy. But until now I haven’t found a way to sync my calendar from the Nokia Ovi service on the Internet. The Address book I could sync very nicely but the calendar isn’t a go for me.

The screen and the Keyboards,
I love the screen, got me all happy with all the Real estate, and the colours are really nice for me. That’s the great thing of having such a nice screen. For on a mobile phone.
But that is the beauty part of the phone, the Beast and the ugly and I don’t know is the keyboard.
It’s really nice to have 4 options for input, but let we just start with one which is working fine, shall we.
First the hand writing version isn’t working at all for me, it doesn’t surprise me since I have one of the worst handwritings, so no worries.
But then are coming the standard input ways for touch screens. The normal ABC way, with the numbers, is working fine in the beginning but sometimes it’s missing out presses. Specially if you want to type a bit faster.
Then the small Qwerty version I thought I would like it a lot, since I’m using it all the time on my iPod touch. But no, not in this version, the screen and the keys are not collaborating the way they should be collaborating and so missed and wrong typed keys are normal events. It takes me longer to write a message to a friend in this way than on a standard mobile phone.
The wide screen Qwerty is the best input method in this way, but still it becomes very frustrating to write more then 5 lines of text.

GPS
I started to love the GPS system of Nokia Maps on my N82 and thought I would love the bigger version in here. I thought wrong. Definably it looks better, but there is one major problem, it doesn’t rotate.
For me that’s a deal breaker because I don’t have a fixed car, so I don’t have a Carkit. This means that I have to put the phone horizontal, what is normally resulting in that the screen auto rotates into the correct way. Not with the 5800, it just keeps the same way.

The Menu system
A lot have been written about it, I think it would really excel in non touch phones with this version, in touch it’s a bit more cumber-stone.
I could really well get used to it and it looks very nice but with the combination with the horrid integration of the screen, I can’t say that I’m happy with it.. Far from that.

Design
The design of the phone is nice, it’s not to big and quite a good shape for me. It’s maybe a bit chubby but it’s ok, I could get used to it.

Other points.
Furthermore the camera is quiet fine, not up to N82 standards but I would say about n73 quality. The video is in the middle. Then the mp3 player is fine, it takes only a long time to load for 4 GB on music songs the first time, but that’s once and it’s fine.. I’m happy with the occasional use of music for that, but I will keep on using my iPods for primary mp3 players.

My conclusions.
It’s a capable phone but rendered worthless by the screen input ways. That is the main reason why this phone for me will be collecting dust and I gonna save money for the N86 or the new iPhone