It’s official. The 5800 XpressMusic is hitting Malaysian shores come early January 2009. Considering that this is the first S60 touchscreen phone from Nokia, I’m pretty sure there are quite a number of people who are just waiting to get their hands on it. DC’s initial complaints about the 5800 aside I would really like to get my hands on this baby one more time and give it a run. Hopefully it won’t disappoint.

So I was loading up the Nokia Music Player to look for some songs to download (more on my experiences with that and the Nokia Music Store in a future post), and I notice the little button labeled ‘Comes With Music’, as you can see in the picture above. Look to where the big red arrow is pointing, if it isn’t too obvious. Now, the last time I loaded the NMP app on my home PC was a couple of months back when the app was still at V1.0. Just a few minutes ago, the app prompted me to download and install an update, which brought me to V1.1, and the Comes With Music button, which I hadn’t seen until today.

In brief, Comes With Music is basically a subscription service attached to a particular device (with the Nokia 5800 ExpressMusic being one of the first devices to sport the service). This service allows you to download and listen to just about any track available in the Nokia Music Store library, for a full year. Once the subscription ends, all the tracks downloaded are yours to keep on your PC and your Comes With Music device.

Clicking on the button lead me to a promo splash page, touting the awesome and |337 revolution that the Comes With Music initiative would bring to the mobile music scene, and the statement that the service would be available in Singapore real soon. More than likely this is to coincide with the official retail release of the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. Maybe during the first few weeks of 2009, perhaps?

While working sets of the 5800 XpressMusic have already been made available through export channels not directly affiliated with Nokia Singapore (see here for a good example), this is a launch i’m really looking forward to; not so much to try out a market-ready release of the 5800, but also how well the Comes With Music service works.