Tasty bits – Nokia 5800

I was recently hanging out with Matthew Bennett of Nokia Daily News, and we ended up filming each-other while discussing the awesome new Nokia 5800 XpressMusic – how geeky :)

His video is here. My video is there.

As I pointed out in the videos, the 5800 is not the first production touch device running Symbian. That title belongs to the Nokia 7710, which is a Symbian-based (S90) phone with a touch screen that uses Hildon, the same user interface as the Linux-based (Maemo) Internet tablets.

The 7710 was way ahead of its time. Sure it was rather slow, but in late 2004 it featured a 1.3 megapixel camera, tri-band EDGE, an MMC slot, a web browser with Flash, Bluetooth keyboard support, location-based services (A-GPS), VoIP (SIP), and many other modern N-series features we take for granted today!

Likewise, the Symbian-based (S60v5) Nokia 5800 – incorporating a 3.2 megapixel Zeiss camera (with auto-focus, macro and dual LED flash), 3G, WiFi, a micro-SDHC slot, and GPS – could (should?) be an N-series device today.

As I mentioned in the videos, I was not expecting this many hardware features on such an affordable mid-range phone. Likewise, I was not anticipating the software to be quite as polished. I’m impressed with the direction Symbian is taking with touch…

The resistive touch screen and lack of multitouch are a bit disappointing, although I understand Nokia’s desire to cater to a broad range of markets. Ultimately, I’m looking forward to getting my hands on the 5800 as soon as possible.