The Nokia 5800, which launched on the 23rd January 2009, was Nokia’s first foray into the big bad world of touchscreen devices. The device itself divided opinion from the get-go, some users felt it was too bulky, whereas others loved it unconditionally. Unfortunately, this is usually the way with classic devices - they’re both loved and misunderstood at the same time.
Fortunately, we loved the device, and it went on to become one of our main devices for quite sometime following its release. Overall, we found that the claims that it was too bulky were unfounded and rather unfair - the device, in our opinion, is good looking, study, and extremely reliable. In this sense, it is not, with hindsight, very easy to understand why the Nokia 5800 became a mainstream device.
Check out our Nokia 5800 Review - 10 months on!
Over the past year there have been a number of updates for the Nokia 5800 which have turned the device from a fumbling touchscreen-newbie into a market leading veteran. Granted some of the Nokia 5800 firmware updates were a little disappointing, but each one reinforced and cemented the devices solid foundations, making it the device it is today.
One of our favourite aspects of the Nokia 5800 is its media player. We loved how easy it made accessing of access to music, movies, and the internet from the XpressMusic button - needless to say, having access to the BBC iPlayer and all the music we could think of ensured the pressing of this XpressMusic button became a daily ritual for us, as we’re sure it did for many of you.
Unfortunately, the Nokia 5800 doesn’t have much onboard storage - a mere 70MB - which is certainly less than you’d from a device of this caliber. However, there is the MicroSD card facility, so you can always expand this up to 32GB which is adequate for even the most heavy music lover. Overall, this is one of our only gripes with the device, but it is difficult to be too harsh about it, as the media player itself and the XpressMusic function are brilliant.
One of our favourite software additions to the Nokia 5800 was the handwriting feature, which we found extremely easy to pick up and extremely useful for when you’re writing longer messages and emails.
Check out our list of the top 25 free apps for the Nokia 5800
Overall, the Nokia 5800 is serious piece of kit covering both entertainment, applications, usability, and functionality. In this sense, the Nokia 5800 is an all rounder, and would be the perfect device for both professional, casual, or first time smartphone users - we absolutely loved it, and certainly got our money’s worth during the time we used it.