Living With: Nokia 5800 review (Build quality)

Home > Living With: Nokia 5800 review (Build quality)

By Mike Browne on April 1,

2009 at 00:00,

We've been living with the Nokia 5800 for the last three months now, which is something of a record both on interest level and also a phone that hasn't been destroyed. With that in mind, we felt it was time to gather our thoughts about the build quality of the Nokia 5800 over the last three months.

The Nokia 5800 has been our main phone for the last three months, which means being used for business, the daily commute and even getting used at weekends when out and about. To cope with this much use, I tend to talk a lot, my phone needs to be thrown around a lot. The thing that has struck us the most is just how tough this candybar smartphone is.

Sure, the Nokia 5800 looks tough as old boots, which makes it a little chunkier than some people were expecting but it's all part of the plan - it helps add to the overall sound quality of the speakers and make it tough.

When we spoke to the Nokia 5800 design team back in January, we were told then it had been designed with tough extremes of use in mind. Well, the 5800 has certainly had that and has come up remarkably well.The plastic on the back of the unit has started to look a little tarnished but overall, the plastic shows no signs of wear

The screen, equally, has so far seemed impervious to damage. The screen looks as good as it did the first day we took it from its box. That said, we've found that grime tends to gather around the edges of the Nokia's thick rim that you have to clean on a regular basis.

We had the phone in the Proporta screen protector for a while but decided against it, just to see how well it would stack up in the long term. So far so, good.

Sure, there are times when it's felt a little too big, usually when trying to pull it out of a jeans pocket but other than that, the Nokia 5800 is shaping up to be a great every day use smartphone, so here's hoping to the next three months of tough love.

Check out our Nokia 5800 gallery:

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Ron

What about the terrible design flaw where the top right of the chassis is not fixed or clipped together? How on earth did the designers miss that?
E. Chew

My answer button has no response when i touch it to answer an incoming call. I will have to press on the green button to answer the call. Can anybody tell me how to rectify this problem?
christina

i have had this phone for just over a month. i think its a really good phone but lately it has started to turn itself off all the time. i was told that all the phones made before a certain date are not working properly. what can i do abou this?
Dave Mc

I have owned my Nokia 5800 since May 2009, it has been the most reliable, tough and fantastic phone. The size is perfect, it works all the time, battery life is AMAZING and it beats the iPhone in almost every category.

I highly recommend this phone to anyone looking for this type of touch screen smart phone. Yes it has some minor flaws – but name a phone (or person) that doesn’t!
jb8967

I have owned my 5800XM since March 2009. I did invest in a screen protector and I bought a silicon skin which have both kept the phone pristine even with daily use and more than a few drops in the car and on the driveway. My 5 year old likes to play Labyrinth on this phone, so you can imagine it must be pretty robust. I purchased an Otterbox commuter case for the 5800 over a month ago. This new case was a big improvement over the silicon sleeve. The case makes the phone feel less bulky and much more solid in the hand. No creaking and it doesn\’t feel oily like a silicon sleeve after a couple of days. I got it on sale on Amazon for less than 20 dollars. With the \"50\" firmware version…makes the phone feel new again. Now looking forward to the N8; never felt the X6 was a serious upgrade to my trusty 5800XM.