To say that the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic was highly anticipated is an understatement. Leaked images of Nokia’s first touchscreen phone known in development as the ‘Tube’ (possibly referring to the long, narrow screen) made the rounds and were applauded by online media, while a cameo in the Oscar-nominated film Dark Knight Britney’s comeback movie and video had the masses buzzing.

Finally, the 5800 XpressMusic is in the hands of mortals and fictitious billionaire entrepreneurs, but is it that good in the flesh?

Well, it’s not an iPhone. Let’s get that out of the way, early . They both have touchscreens, they both have impressive specs, and they both handle multimedia very well. Still, the familiar red, green, and white buttons on the bottom of the phone remind you that this is a Nokia, and pressing them (or sliding the lock button on the right side) brings the screen to life reaffirms the fact.

Design-wise, this is an immediate and immaculate Nokia. The rugged form, the curved edges, the fingerprint images on the back, everything on the 5800 XpressMusic screams quality, but without the opulent touches of an N-series device like the Nokia N96.

Equipped with a 3.2 megapixel camera with dual LED flash, a 640 x 360 nHD display, a second camera for video calls, built-in GPS, and 8GB of memory as standard (expandable to 16GB), you’re sure to get some serious performance. for your money with the 5800.

Despite running on the shiny new Symbian S60 5th edition touchscreen software, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic feels like it always has, with its standard 4 x 3 icon layout behind a strangely sparse home screen.

It’s definitely an evolution rather than a revolution, as Nokia’s interface is easy to navigate if you’ve ever been exposed to any phones from the Finnish manufacturer in recent years.

The phone is designed to be functional in both portrait and landscape positions, but the first thing you noticed when trying to take advantage of this is that the 5800 hates lefties. I hate them.

The accelerometer only works when you rotate the phone 90 degrees to the left, which means that everything from media playback to navigation and even navigating through menus must be done with the phone tilted the “wrong” way. for me.

In turn, using the pick shaped like the two included styluses (it’s a music phone) in the wrong hand became a chore and really left a steeper-than-expected learning curve for using the phone.

Another thing that took me a while to get used to was the inconsistency of the user interface in terms of how to navigate. Sometimes selecting items required a single tap, other times it required a double tap, some menus used the iPhone’s “grab to scroll” method, while others required the sidebar to scroll up and down a la WindowsMobile.

On top of that comes a media bar touch key that sits atop the entire touch screen next to the ‘XpressMusic’ logo, giving instant access to a drop-down menu for music, pictures, media sharing, video and navigation. A welcome addition, just the addition of another method of navigation smacks of indecision as to the direction of Nokia’s first touch phone.

This extends to entering text for messages and the like. Offering a traditional alphanumeric keyboard, full QWERTY, half-screen QWERTY, and handwriting recognition seems like a great trade-off for not finding definitive reliable input on your screen. Or maybe they’re still thinking about the Asian market, which is still big on character input and stylus use, while the rest of the world goes crazy…

One-finger input often feels confusing and unsafe unless the screen is pressed, which feels too hard, and even the impressive haptic feedback is insufficient if speed is of the essence when composing a message. The 5800 definitely seems happier when using the stylus, or even the nib.

One place where the 5800 XpressMusic definitely impressed was the multimedia. Video playback was crisp and clear, and the 16:9 aspect ratio stood out when watching BBC iPlayer or a video from the memory card. The first is a touch helicopter that the digital output of the iPhone from the best of Beeb, but the image quality is still excellent.

The audio is good, the stereo speakers on the left side of the 5800 belt play the tunes at a fair pace, and the music options in terms of playback are more than enough for a hobbyist. The headphone jack sits in the center of the top of the phone and is totally welcome.

Navigating with the Nokia is… average. Having been spoiled by Opera and Safari on other finicky phones, Nokia’s browser is adequate, but it lacks the sweet zoom and text rendering options that the others have. Also the issues with landscape for lefties rear their ugly head again… Playback of Flash inside web pages was a nice surprise though, the 5800 didn’t have to start a separate program to show you a YouTube video , for example.

That meager front end comes to life once you’ve got a few contacts, a couple of reminders, and a track in the media player. It becomes a hub for instant access to all sorts of social features on your phone, whether it’s texts or images uploaded by friends, or a status feed to see what everyone you know is currently up to. An impressive interface that integrates what were initially disparate features of the phone.

As a phone, it’s more than capable too, with easy-to-use calling functionality and contacts can replace apps on your home screen for easy access.

All these latest features are saving graces in a phone that has a long way to go to find itself in a crowded mobile phone market. It’s an impressive first step, and Nokia will surely build on the 5800 XpressMusic with future phones, but for now the Tube will be a phone best suited to lovers of cool music, early adopters, and those eager to see what’s got the biggest bang for their bucks. phone manufacturer. made to fight the iPhone.