Nokia 5800 XpressMusic Review

Overall Rating

Bought my Nokia 5800 express music phone off ebay for £180. The box hadn't been opened then got a £10 a month sim from O2 - much cheaper than buying direct off Orange. My wife's paying about £25 a month and she doesn't even have free internet access.
I am very pleased with my phone. I bought one for my wife and once I'd seen it I wanted one. I ahd a Nokia N73 before hand. It was good, but this is much better. i use the phone a lot: I use the diary because of my job, I also use the camera. I have some expensive digital SLR's but tend to use my phone just as much as the Carl Ziess lense along with the 3.2 meg pixal sensor does a very reasonable job up to 6 x 4 (normal) photo size. I can syncronise the phone to my laptop. Don't use the OVI suite software which is very hard to use if you are synching diaries. The Nokia support website is pretty awful too. I use the old software from my my N73 called 'Nokia PC Suite' which is much more intuative. The sound quality is excellent from it's own speakers for its size and it has a normal speaker jack so you can plug in your own head phones (unlike teh N73). You can plug it into your sterio via the cables that come with the phone, and also your tv so you can play phots'/videos back.
The touch screen is good to use and will orientate itself to the angle you hold the phone.
It has it's own built in GPS and I've downloaded'Viewranger' software as I mountainer adn sail. You can download OS maps and the Viewranger software works well as a GPS. Nokia has its own Satnav programmes for navigating by foot or car and you can search for local services like shops, cinemas which worked reasonably well when we were in Glasgow this summer. I've used it when 'on the hill' and the programme works well. The phone is not waterproof though which is the only downside. Nokia will'rent' you a licence by the week, month or year to run their car satnav functions which is much cheaper than buying a Tomtom etc.. The Satellite receiving is quite sensitive and I have a metallic filter on my car windscreen and it works through that. I also get reception upstairs in my house (to those who know - that's quite good).
It's not an I-Phone but its very fucntional and an awfull lot cheaper. It has it's quirks and will take some time to get used to, as I said Nokia's support, via their website, is pretty poor - as usual, far too high a level of knowledge is assumed, so don't buy if you are looking for something simple and straight forward.
In summary though, I love it.

Members' Comments oncraggan67's Review

• larryjordin on 25th Sep 2009

  I found this review helpful because... it provided nice description and overview about the product.
  Yes, this phone is one the most affordable smartphone from Nokia. It has tons of features and I think they are great. Who needs N9X if they see a 5800.