My smartphones are usually geared around helping me work - email, web, IM, and so on. But every once in a while, real life intervenes, with family visits (in this case) demanding a complete break from work activity. And yet my Nokia 5800 turned out to be a star performer in everyone's eyes rather than a geeky 'Steve's trying to work when he should be chatting' electronic toy. Somewhat surprisingly.
[Do note, by the way, that this isn't a blind fan look at the device, do remember my previous pieces: Ten Things that Nokia Did WRONG in making the 5800 XpressMusic - and my balancing (just to prove I'm objective!) Ten Things that Nokia Did Right in making the 5800 XpressMusic]
The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic's (non work) star turns throughout the 24 hours:
- Google Maps
We started by going out to a pub for dinner - while there my mum had a text from my sister, currently on a 3 week camping tour of Spain with her family. "Currently at Agular de Campoo..." the text started. My parents just had a paper map of Spain with which to follow my sister's progress, and so this one camp site reference meant nothing to them. While the rest of the message was being digested, I did a search for 'Agular de Campoo' in Google Maps. Hey presto, instant match. 30 seconds had passed.
"You mean here?" I said, showing the 5800's large screen, with the camp site shown? Jaws dropped. "But where is it?" my mum asked. I zoomed out a couple of levels, showing it in relation to the nearest town. They were impressed, I could tell. The text also mentioned swimming in a lake. Feeling the urge to show off (sorry), I turned on Google Maps' Satellite view and there was the lake, just to the west. I zoomed in a little, to show the shoreline.
"This is the spot they were just swimming", I pronounced. "Probably". Jaws hit the floor again. I was showing an aerial view of where my sister's family had been swimming an hour before. This is oldish tech to power users on AAS, but the combination of large and clear screen, touch interface, easy text input (for the Spanish place name) on the Nokia 5800 certainly made it easy to bring up exactly what was needed.
Could I have done this on any other device? Yes, this would have worked fairly well on the Apple iPhone or any other large screened device. Possibly the only other Symbian OS devices with the same display size and graphical wow would be the brand new Samsung i8910HD and the Nokia E90, though. And the N97, when released.
- Weather
As an adjunct to finding the camp site, my parents speculated on what the weather might hold for my sister for their travels over the next few days. Again, Google seemed the quickest and easiest source, though admittedly I was spoilt for choice here.
Typing "Weather Madrid" into Google instantly came up with a four day forecast. "Looks like they'll be ok for swimming tomorrow but will need to make other plans on Sunday" I pronounced. "Ooh, ok", said my mum, starting to tap this forecast into a text for my sister over in Spain (and on a dodgy, out-in-the-country data-challenged, phone region).
Could I have done this on any other device? Yes, of course, this bit would have worked with any other phone or smartphone with a data connection.
- Bright torch
Now, using most phones as a torch involves cranking up the screen brightness and holding it in front of you in a vague-glow-that-won't-stop-you-walking-into-a-ditch sort of way. By using the free PhoneTorch utility on the Nokia 5800, I had a really very usable dual LED torch that was more than sufficient to guide a group of us along an unlit country lane late in the evening. The 5800's dual LEDs may not be quite bright enough for serious night time videos (Nokia's intention) - hey, the camera sensor's certainly not up to that anyway - but it rocks for use as a proper torch. Surprisingly useful!
Not a camera flash photo - this is the actual, continuous illumination on the grass in front of me with PhoneTorch on the Nokia 5800
Could I have done this on any other device? Not really. The number of phones with built-in or add-on utilities that allow the camera flash LEDs to act as a torch are very small indeed. Definitely a plus point for the 5800 and S60 5th Edition here, I think.
- Replying to texts
I received several comments remarking on the speed at which I was able to reply to incoming text messages, from my sister and from others. I use the on-screen (landscape) virtual keyboard on the 5800 and have worked up a technique which gets me around 30 words per minute. Trying to go faster than this means that the finger taps overlap and mistakes creep in, I've found, but 30wpm is possible. And, as the photo below shows, having haptic feedback on each tap helps significantly:
Could I have done this on any other device? Maybe. I certainly couldn't have gotten 30wpm on a S60 phone with a numeric keypad. At least, I couldn't, despite being quite practised at predictive text. Hardware keyboards are a different matter, of course, and the E71 or HTC Touch Pro 2 or anything else with decent qwerty buttons could match this fairly easily. Still, to have the option of 30wpm qwerty on a monoblock, full-screened tablet device with no actual buttons is still impressive. And yes, I still wish Nokia would add some writing aids (e.g. auto word correction)...
- Moving map and Navigation
In the morning, we headed out to a National Trust property. I'd plugged the postcode into Nokia Maps and away we went, with full voice guidance. I know Nokia Maps has its detractors, but it's still the best mobile sat-nav for me. It's preinstalled on every S60 phone, the navigation license travels with my SIM card, the display's ultra-clear, the maps can be preinstalled if needed OR grabbed over the air, and so on.
I had several compliments over the clarity of the moving-map that showed while I drove along - again a testament to the 5800's large screen as much as the graphics used in Nokia Maps, I think. Most importantly, we were directed to our destination (and back home again) without a single wrong turn. Any complaints? Well, the fonts used for 'time to destination' were too small, trying to read those bottom of screen numbers while driving is rather tricky.
Could I have done this on any other device? Yes, all S60 devices now have Nokia Maps and it's easy to pay for an ad-hoc navigation license. There's no solution yet for the Apple iPhone (though this may change in the second half of 2009), though Windows Mobile devices have the usual third party sat-nav solutions (CoPilot, TomTom etc), some of which also work on S60, of course.
- Photos
Ah yes, the Nokia 5800's camera. 3.2 megapixels and with Carl Zeiss lens, I've featured it before as a unit which excels in bright light but which struggles horribly in dim conditions. Although overcast for some of the day, the light was always good and we had patches of hazy sun, meaning very acceptable snaps from this non-flagship camera phone. Here are some examples, taken yesterday:
(click on each to download or enlarge to full original resolution)
So a qualified thumbs-up in the ad-hoc photo-taking department. Yes, yes, if you look too closely then you'll be disappointed and will wish you had a phone with a higher-spec camera. But these are quite good enough for 'memory' snaps.
Could I have done this on any other device? Yes, there are as many S60 smartphones with superior cameras now as there are devices with inferior. The 5800 sits somewhat in the middle. It's still much better than the current iPhone's camera and that on most HTC devices though, significantly.
- Photo browser
Although only a 'concept' application, flicking through animated walls of thumbnailed photos on the touch-screen 5800 was an impressive way to show off a few of my snaps from the day, back in the car before we drove home. OK, so we' really are in 'showing off' territory here, but at least it shows that Nokia's single-chip platforms are nearly in the right ballpark when it comes to graphics, even if they're never going to match the i8910 HD or iPhone here.
A rather static screenshot, Photo Browser's main claim to fame is the way the bank of images slides and swivels...
Could I have done this on any other device? Photo browser works on older non-touch S60 devices, but it's a lot less impressive. With the touch interface (flicking and double-tapping to zoom on a point/face) and with the larger screen, it's worthwhile keeping installed as a utility in its own right. On the Apple iPhone, there's a similarly slick photo browsing interface, with rather stilted equivalents on Windows Mobile, I believe.
- BBC iPlayer
While eating our picnic in the grounds of Basildon Park, my dad mentioned that they'd missed a programme that had been shown on TV the previous night, because they'd been at our place and we'd been too busy out/chatting. What was an enthusiastic smartphone to do, when faced with such a statement? You guessed it. I popped up BBC iPlayer while everyone was talking and started streaming the very same programme live. "You mean this programme, dad?"
In fact, the 3G bandwidth proved a little restrictive, out in the country, so it started buffering a lot, plus trying to watch anything on the touch-screened 5800 in bright outdoor conditions was very tricky, so although the proof of concept was there, the location and environment conspired against me.
Could I have done this on any other device? Well, the Nokia N85 and N96 are also officially iPlayer-compatible, plus there have been a few 'hacks' to get the iPlayer widget running on older devices. And the Apple iPhone also works, in streaming mode, at least, with iPlayer. But the number of compatible devices, overall, is fairly small. Indoors, with the TFT screen on the 5800 able to shine out, and with the 3.2" display easy on the eyes for watching videos, the Nokia 5800 and its bundled stand make for a very nice TV catchup device.
In addition to these 'turns', I was in fact doing a little 'sneaky' checking up on the world, with Gravity keeping an eye on Twitter and Gmail keeping an eye on any important emails. Just don't tell my family..... 8-)
The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic isn't the perfect smartphone - far from it. But I hope I've demonstrated that, out in the real world, it's one of very few devices that can truly be said to be smartphone all rounders.
Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 30th May 2009