After lots and lots of recce from all over the web, I finally bought the First Ever Nokia Touch Phone in April-09.
For few months I had been thinking of going for a new phone. The music lover that I am, always had the desire for a music phone. Already had 2 - Sony W610i Walkman for my wife & N70 Music for myself. However, this time my primary focus was to buy a touch phone with music capabilities and lots of memory, of course. Top pf the consideration list were quite obviously HTC Touch Diamond, Touch Pro. Even thought of going for Sony Xperia, but later gave it up for its sheer steep cost: benefit ratio and the weight due t additional keyboard which seems redundant really. Iphone was also out for similar reasons and mainly my BSNL CUG sim card. Never had a chance to consider the Samsung touch phones Omnia, Pixon etc, as their media blitz started a little late.
Just as I was having this great conflict between the HTCs and omnipresent jazzy E Series, Nokia 5800 Xpressmusic was announced in India. It was widely touted as Nokia’s First Touch Phone with the enviable tag of an "Iphone Killer". Amidst comparisons of Windows mobile vs Symbian OS; Resistive vs capacitive touch screens; GBs of bundled memory; shapes; sizes and other host of features, I finally discovered that Nokia 5800 not only had the music advantage suited to my requirement, but also had every contemporary feature offered in any mobile, viz 3G, GPS, GPRS, wi-fi, Bluetooth, 3.2 Carl Zeiss Auto Focus camera; front camera etc etc. The 8 GB memory card which comes with the phone is really an Iphone killer.
The included earphones with remote with a 3.5mm jack are of high quality and the music capabilities are well delivered thru them. Issue of poor voice quality thru the earpiece has not been observed by me except for poor signal condition at either end. Nor has my earpiece dislodged itself, as reported on mobile-review. Maybe these issues have been resolved by the time I bought.
I am also able to use the phone with its formidable enterprise capabilities akin to the E series. There is Mail for Exchange facility similar to the Blackberry service which can be configured for your office mail. Other public mail servers are easily configurable thru POP servers. The quick office application can be quickly downloaded for free over wi-fi. There are many such downloads available for free. There is a realplayer utility for playing back videos. The music player is quite good and has a choice of preset equalizer.
I am still discovering the phone. Internet browsing over wi-fi or GPRS is smooth thru the inbuilt browser. The Nokia Ovi website has a host of freeware to use with the mobile like news sites, weather reports, travel info etc. There are paid software also for games etc. The screen Is amazingly large and crisp making internet browsing a delight. My kids love to play the RTGR car racing game thru the accelerator controls.
However, there are certain issues related to responsiveness of the phone and touch screen which can happen anytime about 10 times a day. However this may be a result of heavy usage as with such a capable device in your hands you would seldom let it rest. The phone has never hanged till now.
Other observations : The phone is extremely light; Nokia5800’s resistive touch screen responds to the softest of touches, while capacitive screen of Iphone (or HTC Diamond/Pro) needs a light tap. Iphone’s glass like screen gets scratches quite fast (& looks ugly), whereas the 5800’s screen in last 2 months is yet to display any major scratches. Nokia OVI application allows you to backup all the data on to the website. Phone is very user friendly with easy controls for all applications.
I bought the phone for Rs 19070=00 from The Mobile Store at Jaipur during IPL season and got great offers with a free Philips Headset (especially designed for Xpressmusic worth Rs 1400/=), a free KKR T-Shirt; 30 free 5”x7” prints of photos uploaded to zoomin.com and many future discount coupons. It was really a great bargain improving the VFM for the phone even further.