So Nokia’s all-you-can-eat Comes with Music service finally comes to Malaysia.

Like, finally. Singapore had CWM since last year while we had to settle for the problematic Bimbit service with its limited and decidedly awful selection.

Nokia had two preview sessions for the X6/CWM bundle 6 Jan – one for media and one for bloggers.

Nokia's X6 next to Apple's latest iPod Touch

Playing around with the phone for a few days, I’d say that as a standalone phone, the X6 is still buggy and a challenging proposition.

Bundled with CWM, it’s a steal.

When you buy an X6, you get a year’s subscription of CWM. Think unlimited downloads and songs that you get to keep once the year is up.

Only catch, though, is the files are in WMA format and DRM-locked. The license is limited to one mobile device and one computer, though every 3 months you can transfer said license to a new PC.

CWM is probably the best alternative to Apple’s iTunes music store which is not available to Malaysians. It has a fairly impressive catalogue that covers a wide range of genres from Iron Maiden, Barry White to Rihanna.

There’s also a respectable selection of indie bands represented as well which should be a relief to those not as keen on current radio hits.

Though I like the catalogue, I wish I could say the same about Nokia’s software for the PC. The newest version of Ovi Player still doesn’t play nice with Windows 7, is slow, a resource-hungry monster and is decidedly inelegant when compared to Apple’s slicker iTunes.

I can still download music straight to my phone but the process is slow and a battery sapper.

If Nokia wants to stay relevant in the upper segment of the mobile phone market, it needs to do something about its software.

Now on to the phone: I admit to being biased because I loved my XpressMusic 5800. It was a poor man’s touchscreen phone but it did a lot for very little money.

Compared to Apple’s iPod Touch, the X6 is far less responsive despite the new capacitative instead of resistive touchscreen.

I’ve had the phone crash on me once or twice already and trying to play music in the background while surfing or texting can be taxing on the phone.

But if you loved the 5800, the X6 is a major though pricier upgrade. I like the new Contacts bar for the Home screen which feels a whole lot zippier.

As a music player, I did miss how much easier listening to music was on my Touch. The X6 makes you jump through far too many hoops and I’m so annoyed by having to wait for my phone to verify the license of my CWM songs. It shouldn’t need to do it everytime I play a song, Nokia.

Sound quality is decent and the speakers’ loudness is fair competition for the 5800.

I just think that as a music phone, it could have been better. Sony’s Walkman series is probably the benchmark for MP3-friendly phones while Nokia’s XpressMusic series have always seemed bulky and less responsive in comparison.

For apps, Ovi has yet to impress me with its selection and the Ovi Store app is such a pain to browse through. If you have to purchase an app from Ovi, I would recommend the awesome Twitter-client Gravity which is worth its less than US$8 price. Kinetic scrolling, lovely interface and great ease-of-use.

But the X6 has grown on me the past few days and is certainly a very able replacement for my 5800. The bundled Facebook app is very good and makes taking pictures with my X6 and uploading them to FB near effortless.

I admit that my X6 is primarily a communications device for me – perfect on long commutes or when I need to quickly send out Twitter updates.

Its battery life is also fairly decent, lasting a good 4-6 hours with heavy Net surfing, Tweeting, chatting and some music playing.

All-in-all, neither the X6 nor CWM are perfect. But together, they’re a great combination which somewhat makes up for their individual failings.

If you loved the 5800, you’ll adore the X6.

If you’re a heavy music or social networking client user you might appreciate the X6’s hardiness.

If you fancy unlimited downloads of music on CWM, guilt-free and don’t mind DRM, the X6 package is a bargain.

My wishlist for the bundle:

1. Fix Ovi Suite and Ovi Player, as well as create Mac versions.

2. Roll out an X6 firmware update ASAP

Verdict: If CWM appeals to you, the X6 bundle isn’t a bad proposition at all. Otherwise, power users might want to wait for the Maemo-powered N900.

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.