Nokia 5800 Tube officially announced!

Today the first touchscreen S60 smartphone by Nokia was officially announced for release. The new 5800 XpressMusic model has a very interesting history of development. The concept went through innumerable changes during its way to the surface. The first developments towards a touchscreen-compatible version of the S60 platform, originally planned as a replacement to the S90 platform used as a base for models like Bokia 7700 and its sequel 7710. But the lack of a sufficient market coverage and the very niche character of the 7700 series itself, the 7700 model never made it to the retail stores and actually never went out the carriers’ test labs, and 7710 sold in very limited quantities, never gaining a popularity outside a narrow circle of enthusiasts prepared to ignore all the downsides of this gadget.

NokiaNokia 7710 can hardly be regarded as the company’s answer to other smartphones released during the same time bracket, it was little more than a risky experiment. After the release of 7710, the development of the S90 platform was wound up, all the finished features migrating onto the newer revisions of the S60 platform. If it hadn’t been for a certain nuisance, the first S60-based touchscreen smartphones would have appeared more than a year ago, but the difference from the current implementation of the concept would likely have been immense. This nuisance was actually the release of Apple iPhone. Nokia was unable to quickly design a product worthy to be an adequate response to Apple’s brainchild and Tube simply risked defamation as an unfinished product, so a vast amount of time and money were invested into polishing the gadget.

The 5800 handset, commonly referred to as Tube, was announced only yesterday, at a time when the touchscreen smartphone market segment is swarming with offers. The majority of the offers belong to the top price bracket though, the good examples being Apple iPhone 3G (we don’t take the carriers’ discounts into account, without those the real price of an iPhone is really high), Samsung i900 Omnia/WiTu and the unreleased LG KC910, Samsung PIXOX8800. That’s why Nokia preferred to position the 5800 model as a mid-end mass market offer aimed for maximum audience coverage. That’s also a best way for popularizing the new touchscreen version of the S60 platform, preparing good grounds for further expansion of this series’ future additions covering all price brackets. It came to be an established trend that the latest top cameraphones all come in the form of touchscreen candy bars (Samsung LG) and are equipped with powerful 8 Mp cameras. Sony Ericsson are planning to join the competition by the end of 2009 with their 12 Mp monster basing off brand-new software and hardware platforms). This gives us reasons to believe that Nokia are planning a variety of spin-offs from the 5800 concept to be released during the next year, some of them likely to be music phones (just as the 5800 itself) and the rest positioned as cameraphones. We also think Eseries will get a new model as well.

Over the course of development, the 5800 model took a new name. Originally dubbed XpressMedia, the 5800 ended up with an XpressMusic label, backed up by the Comes With Music service (in countries where all the technical requirements for that service are meant) This means a month’s free Nokia Music Store subscription with an unlimited access to all the tracks in the database. The only other model to feature a discounted version of this service with special prices is Nokia 5310 XpressMusic currently available in the UK.

The spring Barcelona congress featured the first presentation of the touchscreen S60. You can find a report of our initial impressions by the following link: smape.com/en/articles/reportings/S60-touch-MWC-rev.html.In a nutshell, the main idea can be formulated as follows: the new incarnation of the platform retains enough features of the original S60 to be recognized as an evolutional continuation of the series. The user won’t be forced to face a long learning curve resulting from massive changes in controls and interface. The new S60 has almost everything organized in the old way of the original S60, simply optimized for sensory output. The only two mechanical buttons used in the 5700 are the dial and reject buttons.

Let’s list the specifications of Nokia 5800 XpressMusic: Nokia 5800 XpressMusic:

* Quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900), UMTS 2100, GSM/Edge, HSDPA connectivity
* Symbian S60 Taco 5 OS
* 3.2″ 640×360px, 16M touchscreen display
* 3.2mpx autofocus camera with dual LED flash and 30 FPS VGA recording
* Built-in A-GPS and WiFi
* USB 2.0 and Bluetooth 2.0
* 3.5mm headphone jack, TV-Out port
* 150MB of User memory
* microSDHC memory card slot (up to 32GB, 8GB memory card in a box)
* Dimensions: 111×52x15.5mm
* Weight: 109 grams

The 3.2’’ TFT screen with a native resolution of 640x360 is probably the most impressive point on the list, able to render a palette of 16M colors. The surface of the screen is touch-responsive, so the fans of Symbian S60 at last get a touchscreen smartphone equal in power to the same ilk of gadgets based on Symbian UIQ. The high resolution of the screen stands for a superb quality of the picture, which sounds great for a mid-end smartphone. All of the directly or indirectly competitive products of the same class are equipped with considerably poorer screens with a 240x400 resolution (Samsung i900, M8800, LGKC910, LP500). Apple iPhone can’t offer a better screen either, but here we have a less significant difference; the American smartphone has a 360x480 screen resolution.

The screen surface isn’t sunken into the casing, which makes the construction comfortable for finger-based operation. The stylus isn’t taken out of the question though. It is hidden within the casing, unlike with the Samsung i900 where it is stationed outside the casing. The device design is typical for the latest gadgets by the company; the front panel is manufactured from black glossy plastic, the back panel has a thin stripe texture similar to Nokia N85. The obvious lack of metal is something common to all multimedia-focused mobile gadgets by Nokia. You wouldn’t expect any metal outside the upper price bracket either, and Nokia 5800 is a mid-end offer. Interesting to note, the second generation of Apple iPhones was issued lacking any meal parts as well, with plastic used as a substitution. The only indirect competitor to the 5800 that employs metal parts is Samsung M8800 PIXON, but the use of metal is limited just to a few pieces attached to the battery bay cover. Even the expensive Samsung i900 comes with no metal.

The battery is a powerful BL-5J 1320 mAh unit, which works especially well combined with the Feature Pack 2 power saving techniques. Obviously, the model is going to become one of the world’s longest-lasting wide touchscreen smartphones.

The only parameter apparently standing outside the typical top class specifications is the camera. Its resolution is limited to a mere 3.2, though the module is of a high quality and employs Carl Zeiss optics (a same cam is mounted on Nokia N78). But the majority of comparable touchscreen gadgets typically come with better cameras, ranging from 5 to 8 Mp. We can explain this choice by Nokia’s unwillingness to expose the new product to the danger of a higher price and risk its entry into the mass market. The upcoming devices scheduled to follow the 5800 model all have more powerful cams on their feature lists, but the first product in the line was purposefully shaped as a mass market product kept within an adequate price bracket.

On the other hand, Nokia 5800 beats its competitors in every other aspect of functionality except the cam. It comes with Wi-Fi, full-fledged hardware GPS, a full collection of S60 features, a variety of standard interface slots, a bundling much better than those of the rivals, a long-lasting high-capacity battery providing the longest continuous MP3 cycle. The native VGA video support allows recording VGA videos at 30 FPS. Perhaps giving 5800 a better cam could do it more good than harm, but it would simply draw too much public attention from the Nseries models and eventually have a negative influence on the total number of Nokia product sales, a risky step that Nokia was never able to be up to.

Anyway, the segment of S60 smartphones is rapidly growing. By February a number of even more powerful models are going to join the family, so far Nokia 5800 XpressMusic acting as a base platform for the future developments. Samsung также является лицензиатом платформы, свое видение корейская компания будет готова показать достаточно скоро, в некоторых заявлениях представители говорили о первом квартале 2009 года.

Стоимость NokiaNokia 5800 was given a starting price of 280 euros (taxes not included). The price is fully justified because you get a full-fledged S60 smartphone with a touchscreen, fine functionality and rich bundling. From the very beginning Nokia had been positioning 5800 as a mid-end offer with functionality levels far from maximal, a good bargain aimed at the top positions in the fall and winter sales charts. The mass sales will begin by the end of the month, so you’ve got enough time to reconsider picking an iPhone.

Expect a detailed review of the 5800 novelty shortly and stay tuned with Smape.com!