With contenders like Google Maps Navigation, most navigation apps used on smartphones like the iPhone are utterly blown away. Nokia on the other hand, so far is the only manufacturer with a navigation system on par or a little better than Google Maps. The Nokia 5800 Navigation Edition is actually a 5800 XpressMusic, which in turn was pretty much was a music player. The main difference between the two is that this, as according to its name, is a navigation phone that can be used on either T-Mobile or AT&T networks. Check out our thoughts after the cut.
Price as Reviewed: $279.99 unlocked on Amazon
Full disclosure: This handset was sent in by Nokia for review purposes. As is all other products featured on this site.
Specs
Let’s see here: a 3.2-inch resistive 360×460 resolution display and has a stylus (grr, but oh well), 3.2 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics and LED flash which records 640×360 resolution videos at 30 FPS, built-in 8GB micro SD card, a car kit with tons of accessories, and S60 5th edition as the main OS. It’s not an impressive list by far, but what I’ll do here is mainly say that the navigation abilities of the 5800 are top-notch.
What you get in the box is the 5800 itself, a stylus that can tuck into the back case, a car charger, wrist strap, headset with remote control, the car kit with screws and such, a micro-USB cable, and those soft thingies for the ear phones.
Features
Let’s start this off: this isn’t recommended as your next smartphone, at all. It places phone calls, goes on the internet using a pretty good web browser, uses a decent music player interface, and has a knack for navigation. The design aspects of this phone isn’t very flashy, nor very stylish, unfortunately. I’ll say it now and I’ll say it again later, this isn’t a phone that you could consider buying against all of the other options out there that I’ll talk about later.
The main features you would find when using this phone is the web browser which renders sites beautifully, the Ovi Store, Ovi Maps Navigation, and phone calls, which are at a pretty decent sound quality. To say that this is up-to-date hardware and software is wrong, since the 5800, despite being a worldwide success, is based on 16 month+ technology, which isn’t really acceptable.
Nokia 5800 Navigation Edition Gallery
Design
To start off, the 5800 Navigation edition isn’t a thin little guy. With a camera button, lock switch, and volume rocker on the right side, you have contrast on the left with two flaps which reveals a SIM card slot that you’d need to use a coin or something similar to pop out SIMs easily. There’s also a microSD card slot. And to top off the ports side of things, the top part of the phone includes the power button, a micro-USB port with a flap on top of it, 3.5mm headset jack, and wait for it, wait for it — a 10,000-year-old 2mm charging port. Yes, it’s not a modern phone compared to the N900 or N8; we get the point already Nokia.
And last but not least, the overall black coating is very nice, but the super-sized silver edging is a little uncomfortable to put up to your face in a phone call.
Now it’s time to talk about the car-kit. For one of the few times in my 13-year-old life, I had to refer to the instructions. Why? Because this car dock needs to be assembled, and is ridiculously hard to do. According to the manual, a screw needs to be put here, then another one there behind the first one, and so on and so on. In the end, I didn’t even finish.
The 3.2 back facing megapixel camera:
Is capable of taking solid and smooth video at a decent resolution and FPS, but taking stills is another story. Check out the reference image above. As you may not know, the 5800 also has a front-facing camera which is amazingly welcome. I may also like to disclose that it is also a grainy front-facing camera.
The Software
Nokia’s S60 5th edition brings a boat-load of complaints. Which are in a very organized order here: very weak virtual QWERTY text entry, even when using the stylus we found it impossible to enter text correctly, the lackluster apps available to the phone, and the sheer looks and feel of the OS will be unfamiliar to Windows Mobile, Google Android, Apple iPhone OS, and webOS users. It’s just that simple/complicated.
Of course though, there’s the tried-and-true WebKit-based browser that would stomp on a Blackberry any good old day. It renders all sites beautifully, and has no problems loading up LaptopMemo in pretty good timing. But one thing I’d like to mention here is that is 5800 seems to perform tasks that its under-500 Mhz processor is incapable of. These examples appear time and time again when you use this phone, which outs the question: did Nokia give too much to this phone to chew? In my opinion, yes.
It’s Time To Wrap-up…
There are lots of smartphones in this world. Lots. The best are the Motorola Droid, Nexus One, iPhone 3GS, Droid Incredible, Palm Pre, HTC HD2, and Nokia’s own N900 and un-tested N8. They all outperform a phone that shouldn’t even be on the market today for an unlocked price of $279.99 — on Amazon. In fact, if this phone were offered on AT&T for free, since the Nokia Nuron is already on T-Mobile and is simply a Wi-Fi-less white version of the 5800, it would still be unrecommended at any price, on any carrier.
Pros:
- WebKit blows out of the park on Wi-Fi
- Ovi Maps is on par with the competition
- Can be used on AT&T and T-Mobile
- Front-facing camera, despite grainy, is welcomed
Cons:
- Underpowered; overpriced
- Out-of-date by today’s standards
- Resistive touchscreens are always troublesome — especially with a stylus
- No micro-USB charging is a no-no
- Nokia and competitors have superior phones compared to the 5800
- Grainy 3.2 megapixel camera
