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This post is not really intended as a review but more of a real user’s experience, if you want a proper review there will be plenty available through your regular search engine, in this post I will be giving an overall impression of the phone while in future posts I will look at more little things that I have experienced, enjoyed or, should it happen, hate.

When it comes to phones I have to say that I have pretty much always been in the Nokia camp, I have used other phones but they just never usually feel the same and in some instances just felt unbalanced in terms of capabilities.

Once upon I time I crossed upon into the dark side, I experienced the iPod Touch. Taken in by the wow factor I just had to have one, as time went by the app store was launched and soon became to realise that overall it is just a glorified media player, the whole app thing was a mess and in many cases they were mostly designed for the iPhone anyhow which the first gen iPod touch didn’t really match… and no, I didn’t want an iPhone, overpriced and… well, it’s an iPod trying to be a phone. The other thing that disgruntled me if I was to be honest relates to this even if it’s valid.

So Nokia’s long rumoured ‘Tube’ started to take shape in the form of the 5800, their first venture into the Touchscreen phone market. At this point I was selling up the iPod but in doing so help me understand what I exactly used it for which wasn’t for the apps, I missed the collection of podcast subscriptions I had built up even if it couldn’t remember which ones I had listened too, exploring my current phone further (at the time the E51 which I had bought in companionship with the iPod, there’s a post about it here) I soon discovered the usefulness of finding an appropriate app in conjunction with having an unlimited data tariff which did actually give me added respect to the iPhone, still didn’t want one though.

Stories started to hit about the N97 which would be more of a competitor to the iPhone, however, still a little time away my interest in the 5800 peaked when I actually read what it was capable of doing, it fitted my needs for what I wanted from a portable device, was missing the podcasts, wanted a way to view tutorial vids while work was slow which I had planned for the iPod and could explore further this whole ‘connected app’ business… and all at a cheaper price!

So the day arrives, the 5800 is in my hands, and nicely it fits in there too, even fitted into the case for my other phone, if with a little bit of a squeeze. Hardware wise it is not on the same level of the the likes of the iPhone but is not intended to be so don’t expect flashy 3D graphic effects! This is the problem I think some reviewers/users have, they use an iPhone, Nokia releases theirs and they expect the same, ‘Oh the UI is rubbish’…. nooooo it fits the needs of the phone and the symbian OS always has fitted the needs of the phone.

The touchscreen itself, it does seem awkward sometimes trying to select the smaller things, to the point I find it a lot easier using my nail rather than my finger tip, but overall it is responsive (even more so with the v20 firmware) and dragging things about is of little hassle. Just note that you may find yourself using the stylus a lot. An interesting thing however is the little vibration it gives back in response to touches, actually works quite well and fills in for the missing textual feel of pushing a button.

People have said that Nokia have just tacked on the touchscreen function to an existing version of the OS… doesn’t feel like that to me and using some apps makes it even more apparent that they haven’t just tacked it on, Google Maps is a good example, works very nice with the touch screen (had a look at the included Nokia Maps… lasted about 10 seconds before I had to switch it off, felt so slow and clunky in comparison). People are right about some places needing a single touch to other places needing a double touch can throw you a little but noting which area is which it soon makes sense as there are things that have additional options like being able to delete and move a message. May help to unify the double touch but you get use to it.

Speaking of Google Maps, experienced my first bit of GPS fun, the two combined and it is the closest I will ever come to actually using sat nav. Think people have a problem of letting the things tell them what to do (woman driving onto a railway line comes to mind). With the the right software it can be used for sat nav but I have always said, a map and a bit of common sense is all you need. So Google Maps, the route mapped out and the little blue dot follows you along as you drive at your own leisure, very accurately as well. Actually makes me want to walk/drive out into the middle of nowhere and see where it places me on the map.

Power usage wise it is probably as expected, heavy usage will probably result in you having to charge it each night, in my experience there doesn’t seem to be quite enough for a full two days of use which is a bit of bugger as I hate charging a phone when the battery is only half used, saying that however, the batteryy could still be settling in. Will update on this if anything changes.

Looking around the Nokia forums got me a little worried when I was looking up a little problem I was having. Plenty of posts with issues but a lot of these seem to relate to proper hardware (unlucky) problems or simple stressing out of the OS which that in itself will no doubt improve over time if you are a proper hard core heavy user. Incidentally there are already improvements in the v20 firmware, my little issue was resolved in the update when I finally got the software updater to see the phone after having to change the cable to a different USB port, but also to my surprise, the update retained all user data… however still backup the phone before hand JUST IN CASE!

Overall, as an existing Nokia phone user, the 5800 ticks off all what I have come to expect when being are used to Nokia phones and adds other things into the mix, my use of the phone has been a pleasure and look forward to what else is in store with future firmware updates.

More to come

This month has been a bit of a strange one, like everything suddenly decides it all wants to be against me, first the computer goes, the cats misbehave, I walk away without pulling the money out of the cash machine, the 360 red rings and plentifull in repairs to the car, it has indeed been a strange month. I think the important thing however is to not give in and keep battling on no matter how trying these things seem to be and in order to try and readdress a balance in the great scheme of things I have started a cleansing of the soul.

Those who know me know the rough ins and outs of my history, or more specificly, the complete bitches I have been associated with and for some strange reason I have elements of these periods still hanging about, passwords, items and things of a more personal nature. Overall it’s not really fair on the wonderful lady that is now in my life and it is not doing the soul any good.

So far, I have started changing passwords, that’s going to be an ongoing process for a bit as I have passwords everywhere, deleted images and a ton of emails off the computer and sold on some various gift items. Only a couple of days ago however was a major event, old love letters and cards associated with these people, all up in smoke, I only wish I took photos of it, the stuff before, during burning and the chard remains but overall it has been a major step in the quest of moving forward and bringing balance back to the soul. My lady stood by me as the evil items burnt out of my life for good and that is the main thing, although I had trouble getting it started to start with we were starting to think the evil was repelling back the flames!

There is another thing that has been needing cleansing however, a moment of complete stupidness that has impacted finances in a bit of a twonky mannor. The iPod touch’s have now been sold on, how could I have been so stupid? You see, now we have a laptop and that sees so much more use than the 2 iPods put together, if I had just listened to my wonderful lady and had a good discussion about the whole thing, some problems could have been so avoided, but no, ‘I want one and you can have one too’… So they have been sold to help balance finances and for some other further cleansing.

They got quite boring if I was to be honest, at the end of the day it is simply a glorified media player, the whole app store thing just got quite tedious trying to sort through them all finding good useful ones. Don’t get me wrong though, there are some good ones out there. When I decided to sell mine my lady wanted to go back with a little Creative Zen mp3 player and it really does say something when she prefers that over the ever so fancy iPod Touch.

It’s such a dinky little thing.

I remembered though however when I got past all the glitz as to why I have been avoiding Apple products, the arrogance of Apple and the arrogance of the Apple fanboys. ‘Oh I have a Mac, I’m superior to all you’. Well, I have used both systems and they are both as bad as each other, only one is more expensive, let’s not forget, a Mac today is only a glorified intel PC.

There was one thing that really annoyed me with the iPod, it was only a simple little thing but in my opinion it’s the little things that speak the loudest. In iTunes you download podcasts, you transfer them over to the iPod to listen to, the iPod puts a little blue dot next to the ones you haven’t listened to yet and removes the blue dot when you have. I got the Touch when it was at firmware 1.1.4 and assuming you have synced for a couple of days these blue dots would reappear… ok, a little issue. Several firmware upgrades later, 2.1, and it still has the same problem with the addition that it can remember half listened to podcasts just fine. Have this been listened to, yes or no? How fecking hard can it be? That amongst the regular app crashes, no Apple, just because an app just quits without reason still means it crashed, at least put a little error message there saying so.

While I’m on this rant now… if OSX is oooooooo so brilliant, why the hell is it creating all these unwanted hidden files on my USB stick? Eh?