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If a music phone with touch screen is what you are after, then the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic will probably be near the top of your list, depending on the price you are prepared to pay for this facility.

Typically priced at £350 (SIM-free), the XpressMusic is an expensive little box with an absolutely average Nokia exterior and a sometimes unresponsive touch screen which on occasion requires a stylus to function accurately. Monthly contract deals can put the handset in your pocket for as little as £5.00 a month with buy as a Pay as You Go deal costing approximately £150.

It’s taken more than a year for Nokia to release (Nov 2008) their answer to the Apple iPhone. Typically Nokia, the tough black facia on the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic with its thick border may protect the screen when the handset is dropped, but doesn’t enhance its looks. The display is resistive, as opposed to the iphone’s capacitive screen – pressure has to be applied for it to register input.

When we lift the cover on the Nokia 5800, our disappointment with a mundane-looking phone ends. It has many good features to offer.

IT works on both 2G and 3G on all the usual channels : 2G – 850, 900, 1800 and 1900; 3G – 900, 2100. The American version works on HSDPA 850 and 1900.

Size-wise the phone measures in at 111 x 51.7mm a 15.5mm and weighs just 109g.

As mentioned before – it has a 360 x 640 3.2 inch TFT resistive touchscreen capable of displaying 16M colours, a proximity sensor for auto-turn-off, accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate and even handwriting recognition.

Alerts are the usual – vibration and downloadable polyphonic and MP3 ringtones. It has a 3.5mm audio jack, and speakerphone with stereo speakers.

With 81MB of internal memory and 128 MB RAM, the phone can store practically unlimited phonebook entries and calls. Photocalls are possible. 8GB Memory is included at purchase, with up to 16GB possible by means of microSD (TransFlash) card.

Data handling takes place by means of Class 32 GPRS and Edge, HSCSD, 3G HSDPA at 3.6 Mbps, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g (UPnP technology), Bluetooth at v2.0 with A2DP and microUSB at v2.0. It does not have an infra red port.

The 3.15 MP camera is fitted with Carl Zeiss optics with a max possible picture size of 2048 x 1536 pixels. Autofocus and LED flash enhance the instrument. The handset also supports video at VGA@30fps quality, plus there is a secondary videocall camera.

Other features include Symbian OS v9.4, Series 60 rel 5 operating system, and ARM 11 434 Mhz processor; SMS, MMS, Email and Instant messaging, browsing by means of WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML and RSS feeds; Stereo FM Radio with RDS; Java (MIDP 2.0) games (with downloading possible) and A-GPS support with Nokia Maps 2.0 Touch.

For further entertainment, the video player handles WMV, RV, MP4, 3GP and the music player MP3, WMA, WAV, RA, AAC, M4A files. Voice command and dial and Document viewer (Word, Excel and Powerpoint) complete that side of things.

For texting fingertips, T9 text input is awaiting your attention, and a handy photo editor assists your social life.

The handset will last for up to 406h (2G) / 408h (3G) on stand-by and allow you talk time of up to 8h 45 min (2G) or 5h (3G) and 35 hours of music play. This is made possible by the 1320 mAh(BL-5J) Li-ion battery.

What we didn’t like:

The touch screen is sometimes unresponsive, and we really do not like having to use a stylus on one! We hope that Nokia will change the restive screen to a much easier-to-use capacitive one for future models of touchscreen phone.

It’s looks, but then, at 109g, it includes a battery with a substantial amount of oomph, so perhaps looks is not everything.

What we did like:

It’s features. The phone has a 3.5mm audio jack at the top of the unit, and a micro-slot which is easy to access.

With every release, touchscreen phones are getting more sophisticated and even more costly. You can however get a discount by getting the best T-mobile mobilephone cashback deals or even get a free Nokia 5800 XpressMusic offer off the Internet.