18.9.09
5800 Little Touches - A Review of Nokia 5800
I've been itching for a new toy for some time now. An Acer Aspire One 531 did its best to fill the void a couple of months back, but it is just a not very powerful WinXP computer, and the OMC IT'S TINY novelty wore off very quickly. Not that I've changed my mind about the usefulness of a proper, but still teeny-wee computer - I'm still very much pleased with the decision to get one, but, well, it's always been a tool, not a toy. (How I managed to type this last bit with a straight face, I'll never know.)
So, my itch kept getting worse. I needed a toy to play with. But what? The fact that I've been traveling a lot lately, that I've been taking all my SIM cards (six of them) with me on those travels, and that I've had only one modern phone (Nokia E66, a superlatively excellent device) to share between them, nudged me in the direction of a new phone. The Sony-Ericsson G502 was my first choice (because it's a) an excellent phone and b) not a Nokia), but it turned out impossible to find for the money I was willing to spend on a non-smartphone. I briefly toyed with the idea of getting a cheap 'feature' phone, but that one got rejected very quickly. Dumbphones don't make good toys.
That is when I set my eyes on the touch. Touchscreen phones are all the rage right now, and even though I intend to fight to keep my handheld computer (PDA) and my phone separate for as long as I can (or the manufacturers responding to the demands of stupid people who don't know any better allow it), I can see the writing on the wall rather well. My first GSM phone was also my first touchscreen PDA (a Handspring Visor Prism with a phone module, in case you're wondering, back in 2001), and it made me realise that any device that's big enough to be a handheld computer is too big to be a phone, and vice versa. All my phones since then have been small, small devices that featured the fastest mobile connection (GPRS, EDGE, whatever) available at the time and could be used as modems for proper computers (laptops and PDAs). But, like I said, the times are changing. Resistance is futile.
I did consider the iPhone. Unbelievably, I really did. But, I'd have to pay a lot for one with a two-year contract (on a plan I wouldn't like), and an exorbitant amount without a contract. I also really want to be able to access my computers' file systems and get software for them from more than one source. Plus, the most hyped smartphone on the planet is intentionally crippled in so many ways (no tethering, no Bluetooth file transfer or anything else) which I wouldn't believe possible if I haven't seen it with my own eyes. But that's Apple for you. On one level, I admire their insistence on limiting the users' ways of breaking things (and let's face it, people are dumb, unwilling to learn to operate their technology properly, and should never be allowed to use real computers), but on the other level, I don't want those limitations applied to me. Plus, there's no PDB reader for it. So, no iPhone.
All WinMo devices got summarily rejected, not because I don't like WinMo (I kind of do like it), but because I'm not willing to give up an arm and a leg to get one.
The devices using 'non-standard' systems (such LG Cookie and Arena and Samsung S5600) were out of the question, because if I wanted to re-test the viability of the phone-that-aspires-to-be-a-PDA(-with-a-touchscreen) concept, I needed to be able to put all kinds of software on it.
I also had an eye on Nokia E52, but I realised I didn't want another Eseries device, and especially not one that's actually bigger than the one I already have.
Which left me with one choice: Nokia 5800 SomethingMusicWhatever. A touchscreen smartphone that I could get for not too much money. A 12-month contract and $150 later, I had it in my hands.
Now, everything that could seriously be said about this phone has already been said in two good reviews of it. Therefore, I shall concentrate on my personal impressions.
The design. It is thick, and its blocky shape makes it seem even thicker, but that's an illusion. In reality, it's only 2 mm thicker than the Nokia E66 (which gives the impression of being a slim device), it sits in my pocket very nicely, and it's comfortable to hold, so, well, I don't care. The raised rim around the screen you'll hear the reviewers whinge about is unnecessary, but it doesn't get in my way, so why should I care? Yes, the phone is made of plastic, but it doesn't feel flimsy and it doesn't feel cheap, so again, why should anyone care? It's a good-looking, solid-feeing phone.
The unlock slider key. Honestly, I find it preferable to the more common, press-and-slide *cough*iPhone*cough* method.
The (touch)screen. It looks nice, I have absolutely no objection to its image reproduction. It is, however, a touchscreen, so something should be said about that aspect. You'll hear the 'official' reviewers whinging about it being a resistive touchscreen. To that I say, so bloody what? I can use only one stylus at the time, anyway, I don't care about the bloody multi-touch! I've been using the resistive touchscreens in conjunction with one stylus since the afore-mentioned 2001, and I hate smooth surfaces covered in thumbprints and enough skin grease to cook bloody chips in! Which is precisely why I don't want a capacitive screen and its skin-only use. Sadly, this is as far as I can get with my approval of this touchy-feely Symbian of Nokia's. The useless atrocity of a stylus that gets shipped with it came as the first sign of trouble. The plectrum thing that one's supposed to carry around, hanging sadly from the phone is just... No. Here I have to agree with the reviewers: the touchscreen S60 is a half-baked product, and whoever is responsible for it should be put before a wall and shot. Twice. Why they decided to release the schizophrenic system of sometimes taps and sometimes double-taps will, I suppose, forever remain a mystery. There are sensible ways of doing a touch interface on a resisteve screen, like the WinMo's tap for do, tap-and-hold for a right-click-like context menu, and double-tap for other things (like zoom in/out or select), but S60v5 on the 5800 doesn't use any of them. I wish it would recognise my quick double-taps as the two presses it needs to activate some list items, but it doesn't, at least not always. Add to that the not very good 'handwriting recognition' (Graffiti (or something like it) is the one and only way to do handwriting on something as dumb as today's computers, and this device doesn't support it), and I remain most particularly unimpressed with Nokia's take on the touchscreen interface.
Input methods... Full screen portrait mode QWERTY > handwriting recognition (with a proper stylus) > other methods that aren't worth mentioning (12-key keypad on a touchscreen? please).
Having said that, and standing by the statement that the S60v5 team manager needs to be shot publicly as a warning to others, I have to say that the interface is usable. It's not even a diamond in the rough, no. It's an unfinished piece of shit, but it's still usable.
But that brings me to another point. Software. You expect your good old S60v3/compatible Java apps to work on this fancy S60v5 thing? Keep expecting. They might work, providing they use just the two soft buttons, don't have any kind of special GUI, and don't expect a d-pad or any other kind of physical buttons to be there. Which means DivX Player doesn't work, MobiPocket Reader doesn't work, Twibble, MetrO and Opera Mini barely work, and the list goes on. Bloody fucking stupid. A note to myself, for the future: next time, buy something that uses a non-dying OS, like WinMo or Android. All this makes me kind of glad the 5800 is supposed to be just a spare phone/internet device, and not my main hand-held computer.
Office? The QuickOffice document viewer is free to download. The editor goes for $40. A PDF viewer costs an additional $20. To be fair, I have to mention that an Eseries phone (E66), while it has a PDF reader, doesn't come with an Office editor, so that's another point against Symbian and for WinMo.
Music player? Camera and gallery? I don't care. I have a dedicated music player which is aircraft-friendly (which the 5800 isn't), and I carry with me a proper compact camera (because, kids, and this is very important: your phone IS NOT a camera!) most of the time, so I don't expect to use these features much.
Battery life? Now, this was a semi-pleasant surprise. With my average use (a few calls, a few texts, some BT and WiFi use, dicking around with a few new apps and stuff), a single charge lasted for four days. Now, while it still doesn't come even close to the ideal of more than a week without recharging, it's not bad for a smartphone. It's better than the E66 can do...
To conclude...
So, my itch kept getting worse. I needed a toy to play with. But what? The fact that I've been traveling a lot lately, that I've been taking all my SIM cards (six of them) with me on those travels, and that I've had only one modern phone (Nokia E66, a superlatively excellent device) to share between them, nudged me in the direction of a new phone. The Sony-Ericsson G502 was my first choice (because it's a) an excellent phone and b) not a Nokia), but it turned out impossible to find for the money I was willing to spend on a non-smartphone. I briefly toyed with the idea of getting a cheap 'feature' phone, but that one got rejected very quickly. Dumbphones don't make good toys.
That is when I set my eyes on the touch. Touchscreen phones are all the rage right now, and even though I intend to fight to keep my handheld computer (PDA) and my phone separate for as long as I can (or the manufacturers responding to the demands of stupid people who don't know any better allow it), I can see the writing on the wall rather well. My first GSM phone was also my first touchscreen PDA (a Handspring Visor Prism with a phone module, in case you're wondering, back in 2001), and it made me realise that any device that's big enough to be a handheld computer is too big to be a phone, and vice versa. All my phones since then have been small, small devices that featured the fastest mobile connection (GPRS, EDGE, whatever) available at the time and could be used as modems for proper computers (laptops and PDAs). But, like I said, the times are changing. Resistance is futile.
I did consider the iPhone. Unbelievably, I really did. But, I'd have to pay a lot for one with a two-year contract (on a plan I wouldn't like), and an exorbitant amount without a contract. I also really want to be able to access my computers' file systems and get software for them from more than one source. Plus, the most hyped smartphone on the planet is intentionally crippled in so many ways (no tethering, no Bluetooth file transfer or anything else) which I wouldn't believe possible if I haven't seen it with my own eyes. But that's Apple for you. On one level, I admire their insistence on limiting the users' ways of breaking things (and let's face it, people are dumb, unwilling to learn to operate their technology properly, and should never be allowed to use real computers), but on the other level, I don't want those limitations applied to me. Plus, there's no PDB reader for it. So, no iPhone.
All WinMo devices got summarily rejected, not because I don't like WinMo (I kind of do like it), but because I'm not willing to give up an arm and a leg to get one.
The devices using 'non-standard' systems (such LG Cookie and Arena and Samsung S5600) were out of the question, because if I wanted to re-test the viability of the phone-that-aspires-to-be-a-PDA(-with-a-touchscreen) concept, I needed to be able to put all kinds of software on it.
I also had an eye on Nokia E52, but I realised I didn't want another Eseries device, and especially not one that's actually bigger than the one I already have.
Which left me with one choice: Nokia 5800 SomethingMusicWhatever. A touchscreen smartphone that I could get for not too much money. A 12-month contract and $150 later, I had it in my hands.
Now, everything that could seriously be said about this phone has already been said in two good reviews of it. Therefore, I shall concentrate on my personal impressions.
The design. It is thick, and its blocky shape makes it seem even thicker, but that's an illusion. In reality, it's only 2 mm thicker than the Nokia E66 (which gives the impression of being a slim device), it sits in my pocket very nicely, and it's comfortable to hold, so, well, I don't care. The raised rim around the screen you'll hear the reviewers whinge about is unnecessary, but it doesn't get in my way, so why should I care? Yes, the phone is made of plastic, but it doesn't feel flimsy and it doesn't feel cheap, so again, why should anyone care? It's a good-looking, solid-feeing phone.
The unlock slider key. Honestly, I find it preferable to the more common, press-and-slide *cough*iPhone*cough* method.
The (touch)screen. It looks nice, I have absolutely no objection to its image reproduction. It is, however, a touchscreen, so something should be said about that aspect. You'll hear the 'official' reviewers whinging about it being a resistive touchscreen. To that I say, so bloody what? I can use only one stylus at the time, anyway, I don't care about the bloody multi-touch! I've been using the resistive touchscreens in conjunction with one stylus since the afore-mentioned 2001, and I hate smooth surfaces covered in thumbprints and enough skin grease to cook bloody chips in! Which is precisely why I don't want a capacitive screen and its skin-only use. Sadly, this is as far as I can get with my approval of this touchy-feely Symbian of Nokia's. The useless atrocity of a stylus that gets shipped with it came as the first sign of trouble. The plectrum thing that one's supposed to carry around, hanging sadly from the phone is just... No. Here I have to agree with the reviewers: the touchscreen S60 is a half-baked product, and whoever is responsible for it should be put before a wall and shot. Twice. Why they decided to release the schizophrenic system of sometimes taps and sometimes double-taps will, I suppose, forever remain a mystery. There are sensible ways of doing a touch interface on a resisteve screen, like the WinMo's tap for do, tap-and-hold for a right-click-like context menu, and double-tap for other things (like zoom in/out or select), but S60v5 on the 5800 doesn't use any of them. I wish it would recognise my quick double-taps as the two presses it needs to activate some list items, but it doesn't, at least not always. Add to that the not very good 'handwriting recognition' (Graffiti (or something like it) is the one and only way to do handwriting on something as dumb as today's computers, and this device doesn't support it), and I remain most particularly unimpressed with Nokia's take on the touchscreen interface.
Input methods... Full screen portrait mode QWERTY > handwriting recognition (with a proper stylus) > other methods that aren't worth mentioning (12-key keypad on a touchscreen? please).
Having said that, and standing by the statement that the S60v5 team manager needs to be shot publicly as a warning to others, I have to say that the interface is usable. It's not even a diamond in the rough, no. It's an unfinished piece of shit, but it's still usable.
But that brings me to another point. Software. You expect your good old S60v3/compatible Java apps to work on this fancy S60v5 thing? Keep expecting. They might work, providing they use just the two soft buttons, don't have any kind of special GUI, and don't expect a d-pad or any other kind of physical buttons to be there. Which means DivX Player doesn't work, MobiPocket Reader doesn't work, Twibble, MetrO and Opera Mini barely work, and the list goes on. Bloody fucking stupid. A note to myself, for the future: next time, buy something that uses a non-dying OS, like WinMo or Android. All this makes me kind of glad the 5800 is supposed to be just a spare phone/internet device, and not my main hand-held computer.
Office? The QuickOffice document viewer is free to download. The editor goes for $40. A PDF viewer costs an additional $20. To be fair, I have to mention that an Eseries phone (E66), while it has a PDF reader, doesn't come with an Office editor, so that's another point against Symbian and for WinMo.
Music player? Camera and gallery? I don't care. I have a dedicated music player which is aircraft-friendly (which the 5800 isn't), and I carry with me a proper compact camera (because, kids, and this is very important: your phone IS NOT a camera!) most of the time, so I don't expect to use these features much.
Battery life? Now, this was a semi-pleasant surprise. With my average use (a few calls, a few texts, some BT and WiFi use, dicking around with a few new apps and stuff), a single charge lasted for four days. Now, while it still doesn't come even close to the ideal of more than a week without recharging, it's not bad for a smartphone. It's better than the E66 can do...
To conclude...
- I shall never, ever buy my main phone from an operator - the branding and the lack of firmware upgradability is too annoying. But this is a general observation, not related to just this particular phone...
- Despite of all the things I've written, annoyed as I might seem, I don't think the 5800 is a bad phone. It isn't great, like the E66 is, but it's not bad, either. I mean, even TrustedReviews gave it an 8, and they sounded like they didn't like it very much.
- A touchscreen phone should have a d-pad and some physical buttons. A Graffiti(-like) handwriting system is a must, too, but I'm just dreaming here - the plebs like their on-screen QWERTY keypads too much for any manufacturer to consider including a better input system.
- The software situation might improve. I'm not holding my breath, but it's possible.
Labels: nokia 5800, review
