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.
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Despite the ‘official’ launch party only being this Friday at the Pavilion in Bukit Bintang, the Nokia XpressMusic 5800 is already on sale in Malaysia. It’s currently retailing at RM1499, with an extra 1000 music downloads as a sweetener to the deal.
Yes, it’s a touchscreen phone. No, it’s not going to kill the iPhone. It’s more a multimedia-centric phone that offers a lot of bang for reasonable buck. Besides playing music and video, it also records video (which the iPhone still hasn’t managed), supports text recognition, has kick-ass loud speakers and has a Web feed built into its Start screen that can display four streams from your favourite Contacts. See their blogs/Flickr/contact logs all from your home screen and marvel at how attuned Nokia is to the current generation’s Net addiction.
But there are a few niggles – reports have come in that Ovi Sync doesn’t officially support the 5800 yet. Then there’s the paltry amounts of applications available in the Downloads section on the phone. Regular Symbian blogger Smashpop’s even commented on how buggy the UI is and how his initial euphoria has turned to reservation.
Will the 5800 finally make Nokia look hip, the way it did in the Matrix bananaphone days? That all depends on how fast they can roll out firmware to fix the bugs and for those devoted Symbian developers to churn out more apps already!
But RG will definitely be there for the 5800 party this Friday. NY and EM will be trying not to get lost in the crowd, KL might be making a special appearance while DC is recovering from major jet lag from a very fruity event.
I came into the office this morning to see a colleague’s IM status reading ‘No Steve keynote at Macworld’, or something to that effect. Given that the news popped a couple hours earlier in international time, hopping onto Techmeme and the other tech news sites I usually frequent, there was plenty that the Internet had to say concerning Steve Jobs’ absence at Macworld 2009 due during the first week of January in San Francisco. Not only that, Apple’d also released an official statement that 2009 would be their last year exhibiting at Macworld, though organisers IDG state that Macworld would continue in 2010. Continue reading →
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:
