The Nokia 5800 is the first serious touchscreen device Nokia has launched, so it was only expected it would come in for some close inspection. With that in mind, we felt it a good time to look at the touchscreen aspects of the Nokia 5800.
In previous reviews we've marveled at the overall functionality of the Nokia 5800 and have even been impressed with it's 3.2-megapixel camera. So, in this latest Living With the Nokia 5800, we felt it was time to concentrate on the touchscreen display - how well it copes in daily use and how responsive it is.
First the headline numbers: the Nokia 5800 has 3.2-inch screen that has a native resolution of 640 x 320 pixels and readily supports nHD. It’s a 16:9 aspect ratio display that can easily support 16.7 million colours.
The thing that strikes you first is how bright it is. Sure, you can alter this to suit your needs but it’s just great to have a sharp resolution and decent image brightness from the get-go.
However, the most important aspect of this screen is that it’s touch-sensitive. This means you can single tap applications and have them open instantly. This works well when you’re using the built-in apps but getting used to web pages can be a little annoying. When it comes to launching apps, pulling up a contact or using the big buttons of the phone itself, it makes for light work.
The screen feels tougher than rival devices, which tend to have a soft finish but thanks to the Nokia 5800’s hard screen coating this shouldn’t be a problem. The screen is well built and the raised lip around the edge stops it from being scratched if you put it face down on a hard surface.
The touchscreen is great when you're out and about. For instance, I recently found myself stranded at the train station, waiting for a delayed train (it's winter after all). Being able to punch up my Contacts without having to fuss with buttons and make a quick call ahead proved really easy. This was great, especially as I was trying to balance a laptop carry case and coffee in the other hand. It's these little moments that really bring the 5800's touchscreen to life.
When we carried out our first Living With the 5800 review, we asked for key features we should look at and one user, Ando, really wanted us to go in-depth with the touchscreen. He asked, 'I would like to know how sensitive the screen is? Probably the benchmark would be the iPhone, as 100%'
We love feedback and it's what makes a site like this really tick but we don't feel this is really a fair way to compare both screens. After all, they've been designed to interact with their chosen OS in quite different ways, with the Nokia 5800 being all about getting quick access to multimedia functions.
For instance, the Nokia has a hard shell coating, which makes it tougher and more durable but less sensitive. To be fair, this hard-coating has thrown up a few issues and we’re not the only ones to notice it, as you need to jab some applications twice before they’ll respond. This can be annoying and is the only thing that stops this from being an amazing phone.
The good news though, such bugs can and will be ironed out with a future firmware upgrade, as they aren’t hardware flaws, just simply bugs in the software layer.
Living with the Nokia 5800 and its touchscreen may not be perfect but it's a far better experience than anyone was expecting and as Nokia tunes up the software it'll only get better and better.
Be sure to check out our hands-on test of the Nokai 5800
What do you think of the Nokia 5800 touchscreen? Let us know in the Comments below.
