20081228-021200Nokia rattled the market with the launch of its first proper touchscreen phone, the Nokia 5800 Xpress Music. The phone was first shown in the Hollywood blockbuster, “The Dark Knight”. Available in shades of Blue, Black and Red; the phone truly is lovely aesthetically.

I admit I have only seen it with a friend as yet, but I have gone through detailed reviews of the phone (pictorials, video’s and written reviews) and spoken to my friend about his experience with it.

One of the best features of this phone is Nokia’s experiment with SIM loading. Nope. It’s not under the battery anymore. You can conveniently load the SIM in a tab on the side, just like memory cards are loaded.

The phone has a big 3.2 inch screen with a 360 x 640 pixel resolution. So if you’re fingers are big (or small), Nokia has taken care of it. You can be sure you won’t run into trouble with using the touchscreen interface. The icons are bigger, better.

The Music features have been enhanced, you can slide the phone a notch upwards for the music controls, which makes the phone look even prettier. It has a new and improved Media player and it seems as if Nokia has not given up on its plans to dominate the music/media player market.

The phone is perfectly 3G compatible. Yes, we’re still waiting for these services in Pakistan but anyway. It’s a good plus if you’re a frequent traveller abroad. The Nokia 5800 Xpress music supports 3.6Mbps HSDPA (my final year project is on the deployment of HSDPA in Pakistan) with obvious GPRS and EDGE support for backward compatibility and for the fact that countries like Pakistan are still dependent on GPRS/EDGE. Bundled with Bluetooth and WLAN (Wi-Fi) services, the phone is a gem for data usage.

With the Nokia 5800 Xpress music, Nokia has also improvised its camera interface. You hit a button and you’re ready to play ith the view finder. A 3.2 mega pixel camera supported by a Carl Zeiss lense, I could’nt ask for more.

The phone is priced at around USD 600 and is not officially marketed and sold in Pakistan. It is available through what are known as ‘Grey Channels’ at varying prices from Rs. 36,000 to Rs. 41,000 without proper warranty support.

Hope to see it soon in Pakistan. If you are a user of the phone or have seen/used it or have read about is pro’s and cons. Do share.