The Nokia 5800 hits all the right notes

Nokia 5800 launch was brilliant – lots of energy, excitement, great local (Malaysia & Singapore) music acts and plenty of positive buzz. Now though RG had fun at the event, here’s what we have to say about the phone proper:

It is a big deal.

First off, it’s not like the phone doesn’t have any weaknesses. The paltry internal memory of 81MB can prove a liability and the 3.2 megapixel camera isn’t much to write home about. We also humbly request the Symbian Foundation to start gently encouraging developers to make more apps already. But in the entire scheme of things, the 5800 stands out for a few reasons. Let us give you them.

1. It’s not the iPhone. And that is a good thing. It’s an affordable touchscreen music phone for the masses, which puts it in its own special little niche. It’s more competition for iPods, really. Why carry a separate music player when the 5800 is a phone, music player with amazingly loud speakers and doesn’t charge you through the nose for the privilege.

2. It just might get the S60 5th edition ball rolling. Symbian4th ed was aging and needed a revamp, so it was high time we had a better alternative to the resource hog that is Windows Mobile and the long waiting game for Linux for Mobile. Nokia got the party started so the other phone makers just might follow suit, and make touchscreen phones affordable for all. We’d also like a better alternative to Apple’s pricey, limiting App Store that’s not just locked to one phone/device. S60 might make it happen.

3. Very good value for the featureset. Nice, spacious touchscreen with music and video playback, a camera, 3.5G and Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and an 8GB SD card, really loud speakers (as in really, really loud), handwriting recognition – all for RM1499. And they throw in 1000 music downloads. That’s serious value for your buck.

For the sake of fairness, here are a few reasons not to get the 5800 XpressMusic:

1. You don’t really like music. If you consider music capabilities an unnecessary feature for your phone, get something else. The 5800 isn’t called an XpressMusic phone by accident.

2. You like texting while driving. Not the phone for you. But if you want to kick that nasty habit, then get the 5800 and prevent nasty road accidents today.

3. You want awesome pictures. 3.2 megapixel sensor with a flash that honestly sucks in low light. An awesome cameraphone this is not. But it still takes better pictures than the iPhone! Did we mention that it also takes video?

In its own way, the 5800 is a phone with mass appeal due to its excellent price point and rather impressive featureset. You could call it the little phone that could – a nifty device that deserves its own following. And for what you’re paying, you also get the special privilege of laughing at the poor sods who bought the buggy, bloated SE Xperia for twice the price. How’s that for excellent value?