REVIEW: Rogers Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

Andrew Duong September 18, 2009 4

IMG00104-20090903-1504

Rogers Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

Smartphone Nation is usually all about Smart phones and accessories capable of working for smart phones. We don’t usually cover basic non-smart phone cellular devices but because of the hype and how this phone can pretty much perform everything a regular Nokia S60 smart phone device can. We’ve decided to give a little review and decide for yourself if this is up to your smart phone standards. Prices for the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic are as followed:

  • 3 Years – $149.99
  • 2 Years – $249.99
  • 1 Year – $349.99
  • Monthly/Prepaid – $399.99

IMG00105-20090903-1505

Overview

The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic features a 3.2 inches 360 x 640 pixels fully touchscreen LCD screen with an accelerometer sensor for auto-rotation along with a stylus hidden on the bottom right corner. The phone uses a Symbian S60 5th generation operating system which is used in most Nokia phones. The 5800 supports WiFi b/g as well as HSDPA, A-GPS and has a 3.5mm headphone jack as well as a 3.2 megapixel camera with LED flash and 81mb of internal memory and can hold up to 16GB on a MicroSD card.

IMG00007-20090918-0120

Call Quality

Call quality is beyond superb and up to Nokia’s expectations without any drop calls or problems. The headset in my opinion was quite loud. I had to turn it down a bit which is great. Never had a problem hearing the other person and they didn’t have a problem hearing me as well. Signal strength was great, even in my basement where I usually only get 1-2 bars on my BlackBerry 8900 while this phone gets almost full signal. Speaker phone is not considered to be the best on this. The other person was able to hear echo’s which is the only flaw.

IMG00106-20090903-1816

Interface

Like any other Nokia phone. This uses the Symbian software, specifically the S60 5th generation. Navigating around was quite easy and the phone gave a short vibration when touching the screen. Every icon is large enough, very well organized and easy to find throughout the phone. I found that the dialing pad was actually sort of small. While this may not be a problem for others, I tend to end up touching 2 numbers. A stylus is included at the bottom right of the phone. Keep in mind that this screen is not the same as the iPhone’s touchscreen. While this phone is still touchscreen, it requires a pressing action instead of tapping like the iPhone.

IMG00008-20090918-0122

Music Experience

Pressing the top right corner below the self facing camera reveals an “XpressMedia” menu where you can select to access the music player, images and video clips, share online, video center, or web. Pressing the music player reveals the standard Nokia music player (much preferred over the Rogers Music Player). Music is sorted by Artists, Albums, Playlists, All Songs, Podcasts, Genres, and Composers. Music can be saved directly into your phone or onto the included 8GB MicroSD card. Music experience and settings are phenomenal. You can create your own playlist on the phone and mess with the equalizer. Speakers great, loud and play out of the side of the phone. It definitely isn’t as good as the BlackBerry Bold’s speakers but they are loud and great for blasting.

IMG00011-20090918-0136

Web Browsing

Web browsing on the Nokia 5800 is generally better then most non-smart phone cellular devices. It can load full HTML pages but tend to be quite slower and picture quality is pretty bad. We also noticed that websites like apple.com were not able to load without crashing the browser. Loading WAP pages on the other hand is quite fast with the 3.6mbps HSDPA speed.  Rogers provides the Unlimited On-Mobile Browsing plan which are a lot cheaper then a Smart Phone Data plan. It might not be like safari, but your saving a lot more each month.

IMG00009-20090918-0123

Messaging

No, it does not have threaded text messaging. Disappointing, as every phone should have that feature, but it does have a full qwerty keyboard. The 5800 has four different types of writing layouts. Full screen qwerty keyboard, mini qwerty keyboard (which requires a stylus), alphanumeric keypad, and handwriting recognition. I personally prefer the the alphanumeric keypad because I think that the qwerty keyboard is a tad small for my fingers. Text messages are sorted out like all Nokia phones. Inbox, Sent, Draft, Outbox… etc

IMG00010-20090918-0124

Battery Life

Battery life on the 5800 is better then any phone I have reviewed. I left the phone on for a full week already and only 2 bars have dropped. Nokia states that the standby time can last up to 406 hours, talk time up to 8 hours and 45 minutes and music playing time with up to 35 hours. The 5800 uses a 3.7v 1320mAh battery and prices start from anywhere between $10.00 to $50.00 online.

IMG00107-20090903-1817

Camera

The XpressMusic phone includes 2 cameras. A front facing VGA camera for video calling and a 3.2 megapixel Carl Zeiss lens camera with LED flash and auto focus. Taking pictures on the 5800 were extremely quick and snappy with no lag. Photo’s show up great when there is bright light, but when taking pictures at low light with the LED flash. Photo’s showed up extremely grainy and unclear. We know that Nokia chose to put an LED flash because this is a music phone, but it would have been much better if xenon flash was used instead of LED.

Example Photo’s

091820090080903200900209182009006

4 Comments »

  1. sachin November 9, 2009 at 5:57 PM -

    Helloo…Please tell me that online multiplayer games like in desktop http://www.Zapak.Com is playable.If so I promise that i will buy nokia 5800 after i read replay.

  2. Hubert Lotta July 19, 2010 at 7:47 PM -

    I’ve discovered my Nokia 5800 XpressMusic cell being the greatest all round We have owned. Just desire it had a slide out qwerty keyboard! Anyway, it doesn’t so adequate is sufficient. A great deal of folks whine regarding the digital camera, it does suck, but it is not that crucial to me-I possess a great Canon SD950 camera if I want pics. I am definitely please with how customizable it can be and every one of the issues I can do with it. Needs charging virtually everyday when utilised a fair bit. Thinking about debranding it. Rogers (Canada) keeps factors rather locked down plus the greatest fw I were in a position to upgrade to is v30 (something like that cannot remember the exact variety in the moment). Sounds like v40 has some good functions I’m missing out on.Nicely, glad I identified this forum, I hope to learn a whole lot a lot more about what I can perform with my mobile phone.

Leave A Response »

You must be logged in to post a comment.