Today Nokia announced its first touch screen-based phone, the XpressMusic 5800. The 5800 hits the market a full 15 months after the iPhone touched off the touch screen craze. To be honest, I expected a lot more from Nokia.
Nokia is far and away the world market leader. It knows how to make phones, from the cheap-o entry level to the most advanced "multimedia computers" on the planet. The 5800 falls somewhere in the middle of that spectrum.
First some of the specs. It has a 3.2-inch touch resistance screen. It packs in a massive number of pixels (640 x 360), giving it HD resolution. It is bright, and looks fantastic. Movies looked crystal clear, as did video shot with the 5800 itself. Speaking of video, it can record at 30 frames per second. The camera itself rates 3.2 megapixels and includes a Carl Zeiss lens, autofocus, and dual-LED flash. The on-screen user interface for the camera is actually quite nice, and makes some improvements that all touch-based phones should add to their camera software, such as quick access to most of the camera's settings.
The phone has tons of radios. It will come in two basic flavors, with one supporting European and Asian 3G networks, and another supporting North American 3G networks. Both versions also include Bluetooth 2.0 with stereo support, Wi-Fi, and a GPS. These specs are pretty much standard on most of Nokia's media-based phones these days.
You want media playback? The 5800 can handle it. Music, video, you name it, the 5800 will do it, and it even has a TV out jack for sending video signals to a TV or monitor. At the top, you'll find a full 3.5-mm headset jack so it can be used with most stereo headphones, and it also has high-quality stereo speakers that can play quite loud.
The 5800 is running S60 5th Edition. Yes, 5th Edition. (Nokia somehow managed to forget about S60 4th Edition, which hasn't even been announced.) This new version of S60 is, of course, optimized for touch input. There are some things here that Nokia has definitely done right. The menu system has been simplified so it doesn't take as long to drill down to certain applications. There is a media shortcut key that you can use to jump quickly into the music player, the camera, or your gallery.
Nokia's XpressMusic 5800 Touch Phone No iPhone Killer - Cloud Computing Blog - InformationWeek