The PhoneBoy Blog

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

13 Apr 2009

In an interesting turn of events, a Nokia 5800 XpressMusic turned up at my house this past week. Someone from the Nokia office I’ve been working for sent it to me. You could call it a “parting gift” for my 10 years of service to Nokia’s Security Appliance Business, which is shortly to become part of Check Point Software.

Unlike in most cases, where I actually get the full retail packaging, in this case I literally received “just a phone.” Not even a battery! Trying to find a “genuine Nokia Battery” for this thing was difficult and an expensive proposition, so I admit to going the aftermarket route, which was cheaper and easier to get. However, the phone was the North American variant, it had the latest firmware loaded (v20.0.012), and it had an 8gb MicroSD card installed, so it wasn’t all bad.

I’ve been using the phone in earnest for about two and a half days. While the S60 5th Edition touch interface is probably not as elegant as an iPhone, it is an incremental improvement over S50 3rd Edition handsets like the Nokia E71. I will detail what this means in future posts, but I think I like it overall.