Longrun User Review for Nokia 5800 Xpress Music at 11:26 AM

-As the title implies this is a review of 5800XM with experience after using it for several months. So I won’t be talking much about its each and every feature and specification, which you can find on most websites. 

Since the introduction of new and advanced mobile phones, Personal entertainment was a major part of it. Sony Ericsson’s Walkman series and Apple’s iPhone really amped up the music scene for mobile phones. Nokia’s answer for this was the Xpress Music lineup. There have been a quite number of Xpress Music phones lately from Nokia targeting many product categories. Another thing Nokia missed in their line up till lately was touch screen enabled phones. When companies like Samsung, LG, HTC, Apple and even Sony Ericsson got hold the touch sensitive mobile market Nokia kept silent. When Apple clearly capitalized the segment of ‘touch sensitive music mobile phones’ with their iPhone, Nokia had to make an entrance. So the first of the new line of touch sensitive screen Nokia mobiles is the Nokia 5800 Xpress Music (aka Nokia Tube). One thing Nokia need was to grab sales from iPhone, for that they used the old ‘more goods at less price’ method. So it came up to market at a price under $300 unlocked, in late 2008. Then prices reduced further and here in Sri Lanka now its under Rs. 40 000 at normal retail shops ( But at the local agent its considerably higher than that). What that meant was it created its own market segment that most other manufactures did not cater. At that price level no touch enabled phone from the big manufactures with decent features ever existed before, let alone good music phones. So here is a longtime user review for the Nokia 5800 XM.

Accessories in the package: 

 ~8GB microSD card ~Stereo Earphones with wired N-series remote ~Stylus pen 
 ~Plectrum- another stylus
 ~TV out cable
 ~Phone Case
 ~Phone stand
 ~USB cable
 ~Charger
(These can differ in different regions)

Screen:
Well from the beginning it’s aimed for the Music centric youth who are a bit techno-geeks (that’s me really ;) ). So it’s coming under the Xpress Music lineup of Nokia. Although it’s Music centric as I mentioned it’s more of an all-rounder of a phone. But I think Nokia specifically kept it out of their multimedia mobile line up ‘N series’, because they had Nokia N97 coming up and they were aiming at less price level. So anyway because they wanted to cater youth they added 3.2 inch good quality screen with resolutions of 640x360 and 16million colors. It’s in wide screen aspect ratio 16:9, so maybe aimed at portable movie viewers. With the included 8GB microSD memory its sure has a good storage. Because of the high resolution levels (should mention although iPhone has a 3.5 inch screen, it only got 320 x 480 pixels resolution) it’s a very good looking screen to view videos. Talking about the screen, it’s a ‘Resistive’ type touch screen with accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate. Which uses resistance changes to sense touches. Some other phones (mainly iPhone) use capacitive type screens. Advantages of a resistive screen are: handwriting recognition ability, sensitive to any object not only fingers, has a more precision sense to identify the touch point. Disadvantage of resistive type touch screen over capacitive would be, capacitive screens are more sensitive to fingers. So in Nokia you will feel a bit low sensitivity to touch compared to a phone like iPhone. But as Nokia has a much higher resolution screen I agree with the use of resistive type screen, because you can use a stylus to pin point the small buttons which can be displayed smoothly with a high resolution screen. And also handwriting recognition is also good, I’ll be commenting on that later in the article. 

Music:
From music wise it got a player similar to the N series phones. Player capable of handling audio formats like MP3/WMA/WAV/RA/AAC/M4A. Because of the dedicated audio chip, has an excellent good audio quality. It reads ID3 tags and lists the song in categories as ‘Artist, Album, Playlists, Podcasts, Genres & Composer. It also has ‘Most played, Recently played, Recently added’ lists within playlist menu. It’s also possible to change audio file details within the player. Album arts are also supported, but you have to note that it will only display the album art image at player if it’s only selected as ‘Front Cover’ from an ID3 tag editor. This is a bit annoying. 
 

Only thing is supplied stereo earphones are not satisfactory. Yes we can’t expect high quality sound from an earphones that found in a package comes with a phone. But my old SE w610’s in-earphones that came with its package deliver much better bass and quality. One reason is they were in-earphones unlike these classic earphones. But phone got a 3.5mm stereo connector and remote also can be separated from the ear buds, which is also connected through 3.5mm stereo connector. So you can plug a regular 3.5mm earphones to the remote (in fact I’m using my old HPM-70 earphones which came with w610). Player has different equalizer settings, even Bass booster and customizable equalizer. But it cannot rival the Sony Ericsson’s MegaBass setting. But Overall quality of the music is very good. Phone comes with stereo loudspeakers, which also outputs impressive sound with good bass quality compared to their size (I think I read somewhere that this has a better sound quality output than the N97). 

Storage:
 Talking about storage, you can use the phone as a removable disk in PC with the USB cable; this is USB 2.0 so no need to have the drivers. But you can only access to memory card that way, and when you’re connected to PC as a mass storage device the phone will disable the memory card from its device list. There are other modes to connect the phone via USB, they are: ‘PC suite mode, Image transfer, Media transfer’. All have the normal functions. The speed of transfer is good. It could be faster if you use a card reader, but I find this quite enough. After adding audio files you may have to update library from the option list in music player, because sometimes it will take time to add new files automatically.

Performance:
 It has an ARM 11 369 MHz CPU with 128 MB of SDRAM memory. It uses Symbian s60 5th edition. As most symbian phones and smart phones, there is a lag sometimes using the interface. But most of the time it wouldn’t affect much, one way is to disable theme effects. As any S60 phone you can multitask with ease, to chose minimized apps you have to press and hold the menu button (middle white button) for 2 seconds. Because s60 5th edition is still a bit new, applications are on the way. But most older applications will work. If the app is not compatible with the touch interface, you can enable navigation keys for the app (like games) in application settings menu of the phone. There is an accelerometer so screen revolves when you revolve the phone (of couse you can disable that if you want) Phone has the Landscape mode everywhere except Home screen it seems. One thing to mention is the lack of xvid / DivX player, it’s said there will be several to be released. Built in players will play video files such as mp4 video, at impressive frames per second (25+ fps) at full screen.  

Touch input:
 As described above the touch sensitive of the screen is okay but not great (but it is SUFFICIENT). Sometimes people get the wrong impression that it is not sensitive due to the way it interacts with different inputs.
 If it is an icon/tab you’ve to touch only once to open,
 But if it’s a list menu you have to touch it twice (like double click), once to select it and another to open it.
 In text fields, like ‘go to’ web address input; first to select the typing you have to do just a quick touch(like a quick poke ) if you keep touched it for a second or two it will display a pop-up menu with ‘OK’ and any other applicable option(this is really cool thing most don’t know).
For text input there are 4 methods; ‘Handwriting, Mini QWERTY, Full screen QWERTY and Alphanumeric’ mode. In hand writing you can use stylus pen. You can write words continuously, so it will identify letter by letter. You don’t have to wait until it identifies the letter. It has fairly good handwriting recognition ability. Mini QWERTY is a small floating keyboard, you can use finger but it’s easier to use the plectrum. Then Full QWERTY, it only works in landscape mode. It’s for use with fingers, when you get use to it will almost be like a physical QWERTY keypad. Alphanumeric keypad is the usual mobile phone keypad with numbers 0-9, * and # with alphabet letters assigned to each key. It’s useful when you’re on the move or something, because it got fairly big virtual keys, which reduces the mistypes. 
Another touch key to mention is the ‘Xpress Music’ key on upper right hand corner, above the screen. This displays shortcuts to ‘Music player, Gallery, Share Online, Video Player and Web browser’.  

Connectivity:
This supports most connectivity options available like : Quad band 2G, 3G, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, UPnP technology, Bluetooth ( v2.0 with A2DP) , GPRS (class 32), EDGE(class 32), HSDPA (3.6Mbps), Assisted GPS, FM with RDS and micro USB 2.0. So this almost covers all the connectivity options available around. About A-GPS, it can take bit of time to connect with satellites for the first time but after connecting it will work very well. Nokia maps and Location apps work very well. You can also install apps like Google Maps and Garmin Navigators (which is can be used as a good navigation system for driving, if the map of the country/state is available. Btw There is a good map with almost all the roads of Sri Lanka.)
NOTE: IF your Nokia 5800 seem slow to connect to GPS, try setting Server address as: ‘ supl.nokia.com ’ (its NOT ’ http://supl.nokia.com’ ) in location app.

WEB Browsing:
5800XM comes with a very good browser, rich in options. With the big display it’s a great device to browse web. Only thing is if you’re not on an unlimited data package, you will pay quite an amount for the data bills. Quick get away is the use of Opera mini browser (FREE!), which uses compressed amount of data to reduce costs. Opera mini is a good browser as well, although it’s a java app, it still posses good features. You can browse web as in a PC without much problem. It works with touch input fine. But one annoying thing is sometimes when you browsing (both in built-in browser and opera mini) your browser might just close) and you lose most data got through that session. But this seems to happen especially when scrolling through web pages fast (I suspect it’s a data overflow or something). You can also use online apps like Nimbuzz and eBuddy without any problem.

Problems/Dislike:
As of a problem, most common one was the earpiece problem, which most of the earlier models suffered (it’s the phones manufactured before January 2009). It was due to a problem in the ear piece itself, so a small repair fixed that. And phones sold after about first quarter of 2009 didn’t suffer this at all.  
As I see there are few things to be mended in 5800XM which will improve the experience. Like the adding of ‘Kinetic Scrolling’, which is the flowing like scrolling seen in devices such as iPhone. It is seen in apps released by Nokia for 5800XM (like ‘Photo Browser’) so it should be possible to implement. It is said in the next firmware upgrade (Firmware version 2.0 which is to out in October, 2009) they might add it!! 
Apart from that sometimes phone does feel a bit sluggish to work. Also mentioned before, the sudden quitting of the browsers is annoying.
 In the music player they could have just created more simple and effective way to make playlists, maybe like in Sony Ericsson’s Walkman player. It is very hard to queue new songs to the ‘Now playing’ list, you always have to queue it to a playlist and play. It would have been great if ‘Now Playing’ was also a playlist.
Music player will only show the Album art if it’s set as “Cover Page’ by an mp3 ID3 tag editor. Why can’t it just show any image embedded in the mp3??
Bluetooth transferring could have been simpler if it just sent as a file rather than a message to the inbox but that’s just me, past Sony Ericsson user. This is the usual way in all s60 devices.
From the looks department, its not something we call elegant. What I found was girls do not identify this as a cool phone, so its more of a techno gadget. 
Camera of this is also a bit minor point, it is a 3.2MP cam with Carl Zeiss Tessar lens and LED flash light. But its not very good at indoor or in low light conditions. I use the camera function very rarely, so it doesn’t affect me much. If you really want good photos you should use a digital camera, because most camera phones do not give very good image quality, even though they are high in mega pixel rating.
So all in all this is a great device offers a good value to money, especially considering its price. In my honest opinion so far, few glitches won’t spoil the fun of Nokia 5800XM. But with competitors coming up, even from its own line up there are substitutes on the way like Nokia 5530XM, N97mini and X6 it might be a hard time for Nokia’s first touch enabled phone.

This review will be a work in progress, so addition/editing will be done as needed.
Please comment with your ideas/problems or anything below if needed.

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Sony Ericsson W610i - Review at 5:39 AM

I know I know this is a quite old phone now, so why review? Well one reason is I'm to review Nokia 5800 Xpress Music so this will be kind of comparison to that. Other reason as you may have just imagined, is to fill the blog!! Anyway as there are enough reviews by websites are available, I'm not going to go through all the technical details or features. But I will focus on features that I use and impressions I got through use over a long period of time.
Sony as we know is a global leader in portable entertainment. Their 'Walkman' brand is legendary with its portable radios, cassette players, cd players and mp3 players from very old days. So its no surprise when Sony-Ericsson merge wanted to challenge the market, they used their best warrior- Walkman brand. It’s a fact that Sony-ericsson's mobile phone market is hugely dependant on their Walkman brand. One reason for that is, couple of years back there wasn’t much phones in the market aimed specifically at the music scenario. All were happy with their iPod on the pocket. Talking of iPod, it was a real threat for Sony's walkman line. Maybe Sony wanted their revenge ;) they came up with phones carrying Walkman logo. Some of the first ones were W700, W800. So the 'W-series' was born. It really paid off because young people liked the idea of integration, and carrying one device for all the needs. With the introduction of W810 in the time of Sony Ericsson K750 which was a major hit, able to grab a good market share. W810 was helped by the fact that it was as good as K750 without some of the problems of K750 like the troublesome joy stick. Then came the successor of W810, the W610. 

So W610 had the hard job of living up to its predecessor from the beginning. Anyway I will try to remember why I chose W610 over W810 in a time both were available.

    It had Walkman player 2.0 
    It was new, so kind of cool
    It was a great design, with elegance over the plasticky body of W810
    Had a better looking screen
    Thinness 
    80MB internal memory

But, there were few bad as well comparing with W810:
    Has a not that good camera -W810 had one of the best phone cameras of the time
    Has M2 memory cards -W810 used more cheap 'Memory stick Duo' which can also use m2 cards with an adapter.

Anyway I'm happy that I chose W610 because I am not a person that use phone camera much. So camera was not that much of problem to me. M2 memory was an upset but after sometime it came down in price. It’s also said to be faster than memory stick duo.

Also was the fact that W810 was a small but thick phone, with a plastic look. But W610 is more of a looker, its 'Plush orange' color is more 'look at me!' With stylish keys which proved to be a bit hard to use for messaging, they are a bit too thin. It will take sometime to get used to them. It’s a very compact phone so easy to carry around with you. Its thin body made its impossible to add a good camera lens as in W810. So the image quality is reduced a bit.
Screen of W610 is similar to W810 but with its improved firmware it looks better and especially texts are displayed much better. Maybe it’s the fonts, it looks smooth. Pixels are hard to see so overall it’s a good screen. But at 1.96 inches it’s a bit smallish compared to most Nokia and other brands models. In the sunlight it is a bit hard to read, Nokia seem to be better on that department. But with ‘Flash Themes’ support its able to customize the menu and the looks. But funny thing is Sony Ericsson had made it very hard to add flash themes to the phones. It’s almost as if flashing the phone to add new flash support themes. 
Then the Walkman player 2.0 it’s a great bit of application to use, especially at a mid end phone audio player. It has ID3 tag reading ability, it scans the phone for new mp3 and waves automatically. So don’t need to wait till it’s updated. Songs are categorized in Artist, Album, Song name, Composer and Genre. Making playlists is a breeze. You can just queue new songs to the ‘Now playing’ playlist. So no need to make a new playlist all the time. It also supports Album Arts, so embedded art is displayed while playing the song. Only thing is the art is displayed in a small box. 512MB m2 card is not that enough if you’re a music junkie like me, but it can be used with a m2 card up to 2GB. In the music department this phone really beats most competitive if not all. It has a mono speaker as the loud speaker, but comes with really good quality stereo Walkman in-ear phones, HPM-70. With walkman player’s ‘Mega Bass’ effect, it gives very good bass as well. Because its in-ear phones, it blocks most outside noises. So it can be used to listen to music in a crowded bus or a train. One special service to be mentioned is the ‘TrackID’ app. It is an application that records about 10 seconds of some music and sends to the server to identify the track. It will give the Song name, Artist and other album details in seconds. It was almost 100% accurate for the songs I have used, but it only capable of finding international songs of English and Hindi only. Good thing is it can be used even if the source music quality is very low or mixed with other noises. Battery life is also good, its will able to handle couple of days without a charge doing usual things. 
Even it’s not a smart phone, as most Sony Ericssons, its able to minimize applications and multi task. It only supports java apps so not going to give all the freedom of a smart phone. But it has a very good processor that’s able to handle many programs at once. I once opened about 6 apps at once including opera mini browser, ebuddy IM app and music player. They all worked well, didn’t hang or anything. User interface is considerably fast, I don’t switch off the phone for months, and it just works without any glitch. But few times I had to restart it due to corrupted display of images. But after a restart it works fine. I used it for browsing web and chatting most of the time. Opera mini is a great little browser to use. It handles websites very well. Only thing is the phones 1.96inch screen is tiny for surfing web. With 176x220 resolution the text were easy to read. ‘EDGE’ capability meant good surf speeds usually. 
Thing I missed in the phone mainly was a bigger screen. If you’re into surfing net it’s a must. Then the lack of video calling, it came in the time where 3g devices were emerging. Now it’s the time of 3.5G, so video calling was getting to Sri Lanka very fast. Tiny keys of the phone also did worry me. 
Some people think Sony Ericsson is not as good as Nokia, but in some ways its better than Nokia. Music can be considered one such field. But with new Xpress Music range of Nokia it’s a very close call. 

If you want specifications and features of mobile phones, use: www.gsmarena.com (really good)

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