Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

Now, it's technically not the first time Nokia get their hands dirty with touch screens, but it sure feels they really mean business this time. For Nokia 5800 is not the only story here. The smart platform with the most influential touch receives its first trial by touch. Being the first device running Series 60 5th alone is enough for the 5800 to be remembered by.

It's a first try and proceeding with caution is only fair. Nokia 5800 is unthreateningly and unobtrusively positioned in the mid-range and the XpressMusic branding helps share some of that first-S60-touchscreen weight. Still, it's way more than an affordable music-centered handset. The 5800 has a strong and unmistakable Nokia identity and delivers multimedia prowess.

Key features:

-3.2" 16M-color TFT LCD 16:9 touchscreen display (360 x 640 pixels)

-Symbian S60 5th edition

-ARM 11 369 MHz CPU, 128 MB of SDRAM memory

-3.2 megapixel autofocus camera with dual-LED flash

-VGA video recording at 30fps

-Dual-band 3G with HSDPA support

-Quad-band GSM support

-Wi-Fi

-Capable GPS receiver and Nokia Maps 2.0 Touch

-microSD card memory expansion, ships with an 8GB card TV out

-FM radio with RDS

-Bluetooth and USB v2.0

-3.5mm standard audio jack

-Excellent audio quality

-Landscape on-screen virtual QWERTY keyboard

-Proximity sensor for screen auto turn-off

-Accelerometer sensor for automatic UI rotation and motion-based gaming

-Rich retail package

-Affordable price

-Office document viewer

-OVI and MySpace integration (direct image and video uploads)

Now, you're not the only one waiting for Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. A legion of touchscreen phones have been busy delivering more and better, and owning that market. They sure won't be giving Nokia and S60 5th the warmest of welcomes.

At this point, Nokia 5800 may as well be more of a trespasser than a worthy rival. We mean, stealing even the tiniest bit of market off such formidable competition should be a win to savor for every newcomer. And still, we shouldn't be looking at the actual handset alone. Maybe the 5800 isn't make or break for Nokia, but S60 5th should darn well be.

We're looking at the first S60 touchscreen. A lot less hoping for the best than preparing for the worst may sound like the right kind of attitude. Because a first try will be measured by just anything that lives and breathes, and has a touchscreen. So, let's see what Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is up against. Just mind you that it's more than just the names of a few handsets - it's generations of touchscreen development.

Apple may be looking down with amused detachment at yet another iPhone-killer wannabe. We guess Nokia 5800 XpressMusic doesn't want that label but it won't escape it. We are talking the market leader against the touch interface pacesetter. Maybe not this time, but this one is worth keeping an eye on in the long run. At this point though, for the price of an unlocked contract-free iPhone 3G you can easily obtain two Nokia 5800 XpressMusic handsets - sounds a bargain, doesn't it?

Windows Mobile is well into the picture too. Recent HTC models (Diamond, Touch HD) and Samsung i900 Omnia have shown that powerful multimedia is no orphan in the WinMo world. Loads of 3rd party software and cool and nifty UI plug-ins (TouchFLO 3D, TouchWiz) are great assets but the heftier price tag sets them back a bit. The Diamond comes closest to the Nokia, but it's still about 30 euro (40 US dollars) more.

LG and Samsung are also quite versed in the ways of touchscreen. Both makers have sizeable touch portfolios, ranging from affordable, non-smart touchscreens to 8 megapixel multimedia monsters. Samsung do boast a bunch of WinMo touch devices too. What's more, the company is keen enough on Symbian too, so that's potentially another "touching" chapter in the rivalry between the top two market-share leaders.

So, obviously the touchscreen game is no joke - it's getting tougher by the minute out there. Let's now check if the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic has what it takes to play along. We just took a peek in the retail package and - boy, are we impressed. Join us on the next page, where cheers roar as the box breaks open.

Design and construction

The elongated body is the most notable design feature of the Nokia touchscreen. The 16:9 display is enough of a rarity - Samsung F490 is probably the only handset to be used as a reference.

The touchscreen form factor leaves little room for variation, and Nokia 5800 XpressMusic looks to build an identity by staying as close as it can to the house styling. So, instead of looking at just another touch phone, you're faced with a handset that's unmistakably and proudly Nokia.

Up front, the touchscreen is recessed into its frame more than usual, while the hardware keys' styling clearly repeats recent Nseries. The Nseries influence is even more distinct at the rear, but this time the cheap gloss is graciously traded for soft rubbery finish. The color accents on the sides - red or blue - are a nice touch.

The phone is a tad bulkier than we would have liked but still by no means a burden to carry or operate.

The front of the fully touch-operated Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is dominated by the 3.2" touchscreen. Above the display, it's a bit more crowded than usual. What you get there is the tiny cleft of the earpiece, the video-call camera a touch-sensitive Media key and a couple of sensors.

The Media key triggers a drop down menu of shortcuts to media and web. Other than that, an ambient light sensor and a proximity sensor to turn the touchscreen off during calls are squeezed between the earpiece and the front-facing camera.

Below the display we find three slim keys - Call and End knobs, with the menu button in the middle. The call buttons are just a little stiff, with not the best press feedback. The menu key is definitely better in terms of response. A press-and-hold on it launches the task manager - in the long-standing Symbian tradition - to let you easily terminate or switch between running applications .

It's quite crowded at the top of Nokia 5800 XpressMusic as well. In the top right corner is the Power key, that also handles ringing profiles. On the opposite end is microUSB port, the charger plug and the 3.5mm standard audio jack in between.

The microUSB connector is hidden under a protective lid to prevent it from filling up with dust and dirt, while the 3.5mm audio jack is exposed. The possible explanation is the XpressMusic branding, which suggests frequent use of the audio jack.

Unfortunately, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic doesn't charge via the microUSB port.

The right side of Nokia 5800 hosts the volume rocker, the screen-lock switch and the camera key. The screen lock switch is an essential shortcut - the implementation in the 5800 is quite ergonomic and friendly. Locking/unlocking of the screen is marked by a short vibration.

The volume rocker - serving as a zoom lever too - is quite flat and stiff. The nicely projecting shutter key fares a bit better: it offers a distinct half-press but the overall feel is well short of the soft and responsive camera button of N95

The bottom of the handset features the microphone pinhole and a small groove to place a finger and lift the battery cover up.

The lanyard eyelet is all the way down on the left side of Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. On the same side you'll find the microSD card slot and the SIM compartment - both covered protective plastic covers. Yep - you got that right - the SIM card gets in and out on the side of the handset. But don't get this wrong - it's not hot-swappable or anything. You still need to remove your rear cover and battery. Then you put the stylus in a little hole to push the SIM card out. In fact it's so unusual that they drew a manual on the inside of the battery cover about it.

The last thing to note here are the stereo speakers, marked by small clefts on either end of the phone's left hand side.

The back side of Nokia 5800 XpressMusic features the 3 megapixel autofocus camera, which comes with a dual-LED flash. The other thing of interest here is the stylus which slides smoothly into the back panel.

Removing the battery cover reveals the Nokia 1320 mAh Li-Ion BL-5J battery. Quoted at the impressive 406 hours of standby and 8 hours 45 minutes of talk time it is sure to keep your phone going for quite a while.

The commitment to 35 hours of music playback is something we're more inclined to believe than doubt. But these are of course the maximum values achievable.

The large screen and the power-hungry features like Wi-Fi and GPS can get tough enough on even the most powerful of batteries. In real life scenarios you can be looking at two days of regular use but should be prepared to charge daily if the screen is constantly on and you're hardly giving the handset a break.

The general build-quality of Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is good but the XpressMusic branding does make it hard to expect anything more than decent plastic. The fact of the matter is the first S60 touch handset doesn't get noticed for elaborate exterior. We guess when it's midrange, it's midrange all over. Though we wish the same held true on the high-end too (N96, anyone?).

Anyway, the exterior gives a nice sturdy impression, which however is ruined by the almost constant unwelcome creaks by the rear cover - the Nokia 5800 looks and feels more like a wobbly slider than a monolith block.

The 5800 dimensions are altogether friendly, and the consistent and identifiable styling will be appreciated by brand loyal users.

An impressive high-res screen The Communicator series and the exotic 77xx tablets aside, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic 3.2" display is the largest in the Finnish family. The resolution of 360 x 640 pixels is also second to the E90 business monster only. In fact, outside the Windows Mobile realm there isn't any other device to match the display resolution (no - not even the omnipresent iPhone 3G).

So the large and pixel-dense screen, building on the Nokia expertise in displays, grants the 5800 XpressMusic a top spot in the company portfolio. The contrast and brightness are great, although - we have to admit - they are no match for the OLED technology in Nokia N85. But talking about displays, size does count above all.

Unfortunatelly the legibility of the display under direct sunlight is rather poor. It is at about the same level as the HTC Touch Diamond which means that it is rather hard (but not completely impossible) to find a proper angle for working with the phone on a bright sunny day. We guess the interface isn't the only place where Apple have blown the competition away.

As already mentioned, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic uses a resistive touchscreen as opposed to the capacitive displays in devices like LG Prada and Apple iPhone 3G. This means there's a need for a bit of extra pressure to the screen for a click to be registered. The resistive display technology has the dubious advantage of allowing the use of stylus (and fingers with gloves).

When using the stylus, the 5800 display is absolutely on par with any competing touchscreen. On the other hand, sensitivity to fingers is quite adequate but slightly short of the, say, HTC Touch Diamond, which uses the same touchscreen technology.

Haptic feedback is of course enabled. Vibration intensity is adjustable, with three different levels available.

You might have some trouble getting used to the screen sensitivity at first, but problems will be sorted in a short while of using the phone. Besides if you prefer the stylus (which we certainly don't), it gets even easier.

The plectrum is somewhat of a bogus alternative to the stylus - we mean an alternative would be anything that makes the whole thing more thumbable. The plectrum is just another thing to poke your screen with. Now, we are obviously not the kind to go Jimi Hendrix on our phone. Others might find it cool though.

Symbian S60 (r)Evolution We now come to probably the most important part of the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic performance. We do need to rethink our perspective and, instead of looking at the 5800 as a standalone touchscreen device, get to the real point of exploring the level of touch optimization of the S60 interface. How good - or bad - Nokia 5800 is very much depends on how well S60 translates to touch.

You can go ahead and call S60 the most mature, user-friendly and stable smartphone interface but that won't necessarily make its touch reincarnation any better at this point. The pains of growth can't be helped we guess.

The fact is that Nokia have not done a great job at creating a user-friendly touch interface. At this stage we're not looking at an elaborate touch interface but the first stages of touch-optimizing an existing UI. S60 is more of a curse than a blessing at this point. Honestly, at times we felt as if Nokia is using all 5800 users as a giant focus group to test out various elements of their new interface - try this scrolling and that scrolling - which one do you prefer?

Comparing the S60 5th edition to LG and Samsung touchscreen interfaces or Windows Mobile is not in favor of Nokia. And even the mere mentioning of iPhone would be devastating on the 5800 morale.

This was more or less expected - there aren't absolute deal-breaker issues but the interface is obviously immature and the touch implementation inconsistent. The great asset - which could prove vital in the long run - is the familiarity, predictability and comfort of the original S60.

User interface basics The homescreen layout of the S60 5th edition is similar to previous S60 versions - all the status indicators are at the top, plus the clock and the calendar. A single press on the clock starts the clock application (with an option for setting up an alarm) while tapping on the date opens a drop-down menu where you can either enter the calendar application or change the currently active profile.

You have three layouts for the homescreen to choose from - an active-standby kind of shortcuts bar, contacts bar or blank screen (called Basic). Activating the latter will let you enjoy your currently selected theme but the large homescreen will be quite lacking in functionality - save for the status bar and the two touch buttons at the bottom. One launches the virtual num pad, while the other opens the Contact list.

In fact, we can't help but notice Nokia 5800 fails to make the best use of the screen estate that's available. Not only are the available shortcuts notably less than on regular D-pad-controlled S60 handsets but some of the additional controls (like the bar for the quick WLAN search) are also removed.

Touch navigation on the homescreen boils down to a few buttons/icons. What we miss is at least a basic degree of gesture control - a finger sweep for example could toggle the main menu or an extra set of shortcuts.

The Shortcuts bar in its current implementation accommodates four large touch-optimized icons at the top of the homescreen. Below them are the reserved lines for the search application, calendar and the currently running music track or radio station. The number of shortcuts has obviously been reduced to make each icon big enough to touch.

It still seems though there is plenty of unused space on the display most of the time so we find the decision of removing the quick WLAN search from the homescreen totally wrong. You can assign the WLAN wizard to one of the shortcuts, of course but that leaves you with only three remaining for you other favorites.

The other option is the Contacts bar where you can place shortcuts to four favorite contacts. Given the limited number of slots here and the available space on the screen, this could've been way more convenient if displayed along with the shortcuts bar. On the positive side selecting one of the contacts brings out a list of all your recent communications.

Most menus can be set to show as either a grid of 4x3 icons or a list of nine items per screen. The exception is the settings menus, which can only appear as lists.

S60 users will of course feel at home but the interface is intuitive enough as well, even if not the best in terms of touch control. Each screen and submenu comes with its contextual touch buttons, so navigation won't differ much from a D-pad and soft-key controlled device.

Strangely enough, opening an item in any of the listed submenus calls for two presses - one to select, and another one to confirm the action. Now that's something that you don't normally see in other touch phones and seems to hurt usability. You get used to it with time, but the main issue here is that the interface logic is different when you deal with icons instead of lists.

When the opened menu uses icons to represent items as opposed to lists, then a single click usually does the job fine. Sounds quite strange, right?

There's a possible reason for that - the scrolling logic used. Again we see two different implementations throughout the interface - scrolling of lists and scrolling of icons is different. And it has a negative impact on the touch usability again.

Thumb scrolling is an option everywhere but in listed menus it gets really bumpy. Instead of a smooth roll in response to every sweep (think Apple iPhone, LG Renoir, Samsung Pixon or Touch Diamond), there's a notable break as each line slowly revolves up or down. And when you stop dragging, the last item you touched remains highlighted. That's a reason why you need a second click to activate an item in listed sub-menus - to prevent accidental clicks.

But it's strange why Nokia had to use that logic in the first place, since when you scroll icon menus the last item you touch when you stop dragging doesn't get activated. So there's some intuitive solution that Nokia just didn't use for listed menus.

In the end dragging the side scrollbar turned out to be our preferred way of scrolling in all menus and we just had to put up with the double-click system in the listed ones.

The main menu and each of its submenus can be set to appear in landscape mode thanks to the build in accelerometer. Rotation is quick enough if you don't use the available transition effects (which are turned off by default).

The only parts of the UI that cannot be rotated are the standby screen and, quite naturally, the camera interface. Unfortunately, when you rotate the handset in text input mode, instead of getting a landscape QWERTY keyboard automatically, you are still offered the regular multi-tap input keypad. To get the QWERTY out, you need to activate it from the menu - again a solution that's far behind the competition.

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic features a task manager, which is launched by a press-and-hold on the menu key. The task manager itself is identical to the one found on Symbian S60 3.2 devices. Also much like in the previous version of the UI, it appears on top of every pop-up menu.

The 5800 XpressMusic runs on a single 369 MHz ARM11 CPU and has 128 MB of RAM. Given the high-resolution screen, you can guess this isn't the fastest Nokia handset around.

Major lags and holdups are still rare enough and they will hardly be much of a bother. And as to RAM - 128MB is a respectful count in Symbian terms. Depleting it is quite a challenge, unless done on purpose.

We have prepared a couple of short videos demonstrating the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic user interface. Those should give you a better idea about its speed responsiveness and organization.

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic comes with 86MB of internal memory plus the 8GB memory card that ships along. If that seems insufficient 16GB microSD cards are available and compatible. Accessing data on the card isn't any slower (not noticeably at least) than doing so on the phone memory. The phone didn't seem to slow as the memory card started filling either.

Customizing the UI There are a number of options for customizing the interface of you Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. For starters you can change the menu view mode - the options here are pretty limited though.

You can also switch theme effects on and off. There are some really nice transition effects all over the interface but if you'd rather have your handset fast than pretty you'd be better off without them.

Finally, you can change the theme itself. From wallpaper through icons and transition effects, everything can be modified. Our unit came with a single theme preinstalled but there are already quite some of those available online.

Symbian vs. the rest of the world - the battle just begins Before we move on, the big question is how the Symbian S60 touch-enabled 5th edition compares to the other touch UIs on the market.

For one, it is quite obvious that the S60 5th is a toddler, probably only comparable to the Google's Android OS. Some may argue that the same could be said about Apple's OSX iPhone implementation but we disagree. Apple may be blamed for being cheeky twisted snobs but hardly for undercooking the UI. There are many features that miss on the iPhone, but the ones they want to be there are there - an new ones are spawning with every other software update.

The main disadvantage of the Symbian 5th edition to competitors is its inconsistency. It uses one click here and double click there, you can flip through photos with finger sweeps but not SMS and emails - this whole thing is rather confusing, and annoying.

The other main issue is the design, which is no match for the looks of Samsung's TouchWiz and Apple's OSX, or even a plug-in like TouchFLO 3D. The Symbian S60 5th edition looks a bit too conservative for our taste and the customization options fail to address that. The added transition effects however are a nice step in the right direction and a clear indication that Nokia are about to change that.

The wasted standby screen is another thing we cannot quite accept. While every other manufacturer tries to grant access to as many features as possible straight on the homescreen, Nokia only give us 4 shortcut keys. The Contacts bar is also an option, but having both could've been way better.

The strongest point of the S60 5th edition as it currently stands is probably its structure. All the options are logically located exactly where you would expect them to be. And if you happen to disagree - rearrangement is as easy as it gets.

The file management of the Symbian S60 5th is also praiseworthy. The only other touch-enabled devices that are comparable are the WinMo crowd.

And finally, coming to third party software, Symbian touch is still too young to make a difference. The number of applications available is incomparably in favor of WinMo. Even the iPhone enjoys a larger base of available applications, even if the vast majority brings about functionality that you take for granted on other smartphones. On the other hand, the S60 already fares better than feature touchscreen phones by LG and Samsung, which are only limited to Java applications. Plus, the S60 touch is likely to catch up.

OK then, catching up may be easier said than done but Symbian Touch has one of the best reasons to think big. S60 5th - as it is now - sure needs refinement but it still steps on the market-leading smart platform. Immature, inconsistent - a beta version if that's what makes you happy - the S60 touch UI is a first attempt. We guess the verdict will be as good as the N97.

Music player could be better Having in mind the XpressMusic branding, we thought that the music player of the Nokia 5800 will be one of the parts of the UI to see the most changes. As it turned out this couldn't have been further away from the truth - the application is quite identical to the S60 3rd edition versions. A few cosmetic changes here and there and touch-optimization is all that sets it apart.

Not that the music player isn't capable enough or something - it surely has more than enough functionality. However some more eye-candy would be quite welcome. After all the touch interfaces are usually mostly about being fun to use and nice to look at.

Your music library is automatically sorted by artist, album, genre and composer and searching tracks by gradual typing is available. You can also create your own playlists in no time. The process of adding tracks to the library is as simple as choosing the refresh option. You won't need to do that if you upload the music via the proprietary PC Suite application.

With the huge number of supported formats you will hardly ever come across an audio file that the phone won't handle. Album art is also supported and if you don't like the default sound of the device you can enhance it by applying one of the five equalizer presets and if they seem insufficient you can create new ones in a matter of seconds.

Quite naturally, the player can also be minimized to play in background. In this case a tab appears on the stand-by screen indicating the currently running track.

Remarkable audio quality Speaking of music playback, the 5800 XpressMusic turned out to be the best Nokia example for audio quality to date. That's that and no fancy foreword would've made sense. We've been seeing improvement over recent devices by the Finns and now the 5800 comes to crown the whole thing. In fact, we've never seen a so good numbers on any other mobile phone.

The phone flaunts an amazing frequency response keeping within the +-1db range effortlessly. Furthermore, for most of its range it is right on the perfect track. Noise level and dynamic range readings are also praiseworthy and so is THD. IMD and crosstalk are not as impressive but still quite good. All in all, you will be enjoying some of the industry best quality audio with Nokia 5800 XpressMusic.

Video player is limited Watching a video on the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is a mixed bag. The built-in video player has decent functionality but only supports a very limited number of codecs, no DivX and XviD. While this was hardly an issue with previous Symbian versions, developers haven't yet come up with a 3rd party solution for the 5th edition of the S60 UI.

Some claim that their products are compatible but we couldn't get any of them to work properly on our unit. Anyway, this will most probably be addressed in the nearest future but until then you will have to resort to MP4 videos only.

Luckily, the Nokia PC suite has a built-in application that automatically converts all kinds of video files to the format and resolution your phone supports - you'll need of course to upload through it. We would have preferred to use mass storage mode instead, but we'll have to do it the Apple way for now. In addition, the automatic converter seems to compress the videos too much even at the highest quality setting and they look over pixilated.

The video player itself only works in fullscreen landscape mode but, since anything else would have made the widescreen display useless, this is understandable. When in fullscreen, a press on the screen shows the controls which are normally hidden.

The amply sized high-res screen is also more than welcome for truly enjoying your videos. And if you have the video stand you might as well think twice before bringing your portable video player the next time you are going out.

Image gallery - touch steps up The gallery of Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is yet another part of its interface that hasn't been drastically changed compared to its predecessors. It has neither the swanky 3D view mode, nor the customizable slideshow we are used to seeing in the Nseries. The only difference here is the added touch-friendliness. In fact, the gallery is one of the very few places around the interface where sweep gestures are allowed. VGA videos sound sweet Video recording is the better part of the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic imaging skills. The phone can shoot VGA footage at 30fps. Sounds like good quality and it very well is. The good frame rate makes things all the sweeter.

Videos are captured in MPEG-4 format and can have automatic or manual white balance. The other available settings are night mode, exposure and color effects. You can also have the dual-led flash on to act as a video light.

Connectivity duly covered Smartphones are usually well-heeled in terms of connectivity. Nokia 5800 XpressMusic makes no exception: all contemporary means of data transfer are supported.

Both USB and Bluetooth are version 2.0 and the latter naturally also sports A2DP. Wi-Fi with UPnP support is also at hand.

All kinds of network connectivity are at the user disposal - GPRS, EDGE and 3G with HSDPA.

By the way if you are want to know which version of the 5800 XpressMusic you should get - the one with dual-band 900/2100 MHz UMTS or the 850/1900 MHz variety you might want to consult our Worldwide Network Bands distribution database.

Finally, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic has a memory card slot, which can usually give you the fastest data transfer rates.

Web browser is a mixed bag The web browser of Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is about the same as on the latest S60 3rd edition devices. This is a real pity. A great browser already, it could've simply kicked butt on a touchscreen device. But not this time, folks. Apparently Nokia either lacked the time or the will, so we're left with not the best touch-optimized version of the browser we know and appreciate.

Panning is the only thing that is done by sweep gestures here, and zoom is controlled by tapping on the screen. However the three zoom steps that are controlled via taps aren't the most suitable we can think of. Those include fit to width, fit to height and a third one, which seem to have no reasonable explanation. The first two are however always assuming that you use the handset in portrait position, which gets quite annoying at times.

Furthermore, even if you happen to be in portrait mode and choose the fit-to-width zoom level, the text does not automatically center onscreen. Instead you will have to align it manually, which is nonsense really.

At least the page rendering algorithm is quite good, making all the pages look as if browsed from a desktop PC. The high resolution is also a welcome bonus here, as it allows more content to fit on the screen.

Finally, the web browser has full support for both Flash and Java, which means that you can enjoy flash videos straight from your browser without having to use the mobile versions of sites like YouTube.

So, generally speaking, the first S60 touch-browser is quite a disappointment. The only advantage over previous versions is sadly not touchscreen, but display resolution. And that's seriously undermined by the not so good software implementation. We certainly hope Nokia invest enough effort to make one of the most important applications more user-friendly.

Time-management capabilities are good enough The S60 organizer didn't obviously get too much effort beyond the actual touch optimization. Well, developers were right up to a point but, given the progress of most competitors, some new functionality would have been nice - like copy/paste of events in the calendar or a new calculator. We have to admit though that the calculator is much more comfortable operating with fingers than with a D-pad, almost as if it was designed for such use from the very beginning. Now let's just hope new non-touchscreen devices get something better.

The calendar has four different view modes - monthly, weekly, daily and to-do, which allows you to check up all your To-Do entries regardless of their date. There are the same four types of events available for setting up as on S60 3rd edition - Meeting, Memo, Anniversary and To-do. Each event has unique fields of its own, and some of them allow an alarm to be activated at a preset time to act as a reminder.

Gaming: Accelerometer in the focus Accelerometer-based games were expected to be the focus of Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. Truth is, our unit only came with two preinstalled games and only one of them could make use of the orientation sensor. Moreover, control isn't nearly as precise as we hoped it to be and, while the big screen is certainly a welcome advantage, touch-operated devices are no match for a regular keypad when it comes to gaming.

GPS is very good Nokia 5800 XpressMusic comes with a built-in GPS receiver and judging on our experience it seems a highly sensitive unit. The handset managed to acquire satellite lock from cold start in a moving car in about two minutes which is basically as good as it gets. A-GPS might have sliced a few additional seconds from that time had it been turned on.

The large high-resolution screen sounds like a serious premise for reasonable use as a dedicated navigation unit. Unfortunately, the 5800 XpressMusic has no free voice guided navigation, unlike most other Nokia GPS-enabled devices recently, but that could be expected with that kind of price tag.

The phone also comes with Nokia Maps 2.0 Touch preinstalled. As you might have guessed this is merely a touch-enabled version of the standard Nokia Maps 2.0 application. It offers extensive map coverage for free but you do need to pay for most of its extra features such as traffic information or city guides.

As we just mentioned you will also have to buy the voice-guided navigation license, should you pick the application for the purpose. At least the actual purchase itself is quite simple directly via the phone interface. If you prefer an alternative navigation software, you might want to carefully look around for a compatible version.

The touch-enabled Nokia Maps application itself is doing pretty well in terms of features too. It has four different view modes including satellite and hybrid maps. Those however do need an internet connection. The more regular 2D and 3D view modes are also at hand.

However, we do have some to say about touch implementation. The lack of a dedicated shortcut on the screen means you need to enter the options menu to center the map back to your current position after you have panned in some direction - in a regular keypad handset, the 0 key will take care of that. On the positive side, panning and zooming in the maps is really fast and the high-res screen is capable of showing quite a lot of data.

The overall impression with GPS navigation on Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is very positive but, having in mind that a 1-year voice-guided navigation costs about a third of the price of the handset, we are not sure whether many people will go for that. But who knows - with an ample screen like that it might easily replace a standalone navigation system.