Nokia 5800 received a lot of flak when it came out. Now that it is nearly a year since it released and with many firmware updates, i am looking for an updated opinion on Nokia 5800.
I currently have a Samsung i600 with WM5, and it is really clunky and quite slow. It's a great messaging device with a great keypad but i was thinking of going touchscreen. I could buy an iPhone, it's vast number of applications and games is quite alluring, i simply do not have the money to buy it as it is nearly triple the price were i stay.
Nokia 5800 fits my budget and seems to provide just what an iPhone would do plus more (minus the awesome games, however).
So how is the 5800 after all the firmware updates? Could i please ask those who are currently using the phone to give an impression? Has the UI been updated? Speed up? Any new features/improvements? And etc. I would really love to hear you out. Is the Nokia 5800 worth it after all the firmware updates?
A side question, will i be able to use Opera Mobile or Skyfire on it? I would like a better browser than the default one. Unless it's really good. The one on my bro's E71 wasn't that great.
Thank you for the replies.
First of all, I have to say that I�m not a heavy user (only few calls n texts/emails per day). But I do use the phone for internet (Web, IM, VOIP), GPS navigation (Garmin), Hands free calling/music playback over A2DP BT headset and Wi-Fi .
I had a 5800 for the last 4 months, and so far quite happy with the overall experience. I got the phone with firmware ver 21, upgraded to v25 almost immediately and then to v30 few weeks back. There was a slight performance increase with v30, but nothing significant.
As you might have heard, camera has poor performance, even compared to some of the older Nokia 3.2MP camera phones (i.e N73 etc.). I don't think firmware updates had any noticeable effect on the camera picture quality. And the touch screen is not that great either, but IMO pretty functional nevertheless. This is not a big problem if you don�t send out lot of texts or emails, cos the onscreen keyboard is not the easiest to use. Since it is a resistive screen, you have to use finger nails instead of finger tips; otherwise taps will not be registered properly.
As far as 3rd party applications are concerned, there are plenty of apps and games for Symbian platform. Number of apps available on Apple App store may seem staggering compared to OVI store, but don�t let those numbers fool you. Most of those apps are pretty useless, and there are many 3rd party apps and games out there that will work on 5800 but not listed at OVI store.
Opera Mini works pretty well on 5800, infact I use it quite a lot. I think Opera announced that an upcoming version of Opera Mobile for Symbian will work with S60v5, but AFAIK Skyfire does not support S60v5 yet nor have any plans.
Battery life is pretty decent under normal use (no Wi-Fi or constant 3G data usage); very good for audio playback. Its rated to have 35hr audio playback time, I don�t know whether it can go on for that long, but I have used it for more than 12hrs with normal phone usage (calls and internet).