Nokias answer to the iPhone

Unlike others,who jumped into the touchscreen race as soon as Apple introduced its iPhone,Nokia played safe,surveying the market for two years before coming out with its Nokia 5800...

Unlike others,who jumped into the touchscreen race as soon as Apple introduced its iPhone,Nokia played safe,surveying the market for two years before coming out with its Nokia 5800 Xpress Music,or the Tube. Now,the Tube has positioned itself as a competitor to the iPhone,Samsung Omnia and Sony Ericsson Xperia,but at a far more competitive price.
The Tube is not much to look at,though Nokia has retained its preffered candy bar shape with clean lines and rounded corners. And,at 109 grams,it is quite light-weight for its category despite the 3.2 touchscreen.

The screen supports 16 million colours. But the Xpress Music 5800 does not have multi-touch functionality and works on double-tap mechanism. So,to open an application,you will have to tap once to select it and tap again to open it. The screen orientation changes from portrait to horizontal when the phone is rotated.
The homepage has icons for the phone book and dialer. One can also add a customisable shortcut bar or a favourite contact for instant access.

The Tubes music player produces superb sound,displays album art and lets you search through tracks using a search bar or by flicking through a list of tracks. The phone also has sound augmenters like bass booster,stereo widening and equaliser. One can store up to 12,000 songs in the optional 16 GB microSD card.
The Tube has several texting optionsan alphanumeric keypad,a full and painfully small mini-QWERTY keyboard as well as handwriting recognitionbut fails to satisfy.

The phones browser,while not as impressive as the iPhones,displays full-sized pages and gives users the option to zoom in and swipe through the screen. The GPS,along with Nokia Maps or Google Maps,offers one of the best navigating experiences on a Nokia phone till date.
A 3.2 megapixel camera,with Carl Zeiss lens,takes pictures in three resolutions: large,medium and multimedia. The dual LED lights are good enough to illuminate a subject within a few metres. One can flick through the pictures in the gallery like in the iPhone.

Nokias first touchscreen phone is a winner when you consider the price of the competition,but it8217;s still not as good as it could have been. Theres nothing outrageously wrong with it,but it is rather lacklustre compared to other phones in the range. The Nokia 5800 can be yours for Rs 21,839.