Nokia Launches Touchscreen Music Phone
By Joseph Palenchar -- TWICE, 10/3/2008
London — Nokia’s first touchscreen-equipped cellphone, the music-playing 3G 5800 XpressMusic, is due in the fourth quarter in Europe, but a North American edition isn’t planned for U.S. availability until sometime next year, a spokesman said.
Another version of the phone, due in Europe early next year at an unannounced price, will deliver free one-year
|
|
Nokia’s 5800 XpressMusic phone |
access to Nokia’s soon-to-launch Comes With Music service, which allows one year of free unlimited over-the-air downloading of protected-WMA music tracks from the catalogs of the big four music labels (Warner, Sony/BMG, EMI and Universal) and independents. Tracks downloaded during that time can be kept after the year is up, and additional songs can be purchased after that time on an a la carte basis from Nokia’s Music Store. Consumers can also download Comes With Music songs to their PC and side-load them to the phone, a spokesman told TWICE.
The service launches in mid-October in the U.K. with compatibility on select Nokia phones, but the company hasn’t announced plans to launch the service in the U.S.
The company also hasn’t said whether the 5800, a GSM/W-CDMA HSDPA (high-speed downlink packet access) phone, will be sold in the U.S. through carriers or, as an unlocked phone, direct to retailers or consumers.
In Europe, the 4.31-inch by 2.04-inch by 0.61-inch, 3.85-ounce phone will sell for around 279 euros, or $368 based on an exchange rate of $1.38 per euro, excluding carrier subsidies.
For the U.S., the phone will operate in 3G HSDPA mode in the 850/1900MHz bands and quadband GSM/EDGE is the U.S. and overseas. It lacks dialing buttons and hard QWERTY keyboard, so dialing and text entry must be accomplished through a virtual keypad and keyboard appearing on the 3.2-inch widescreen display. The front panel features only three hard buttons: talk, end and menu control.
It comes with included 8GB MicroSD card, ability to support a 16GB card, 3.2-megapixel camera/camcorder with 30 fps VGA playback, built-in stereo speakers, stereo Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, 3.5mm headphone jack, Flash support for viewing Web video, and Symbian Series 60 (5th edition) operating system and interface.
Unlike other touchscreen phones that have come to market, it eschews a capacitive touchscreen in favor of a resistive touchscreen, enabling the use of a finger, stylus or plectrum (guitar-pick like tool) to navigate the phone. Capacitive touchscreens allow only for fingertip control. The resistive touchscreen meets the needs “of users across a diverse range of culturally-different regions,” Strategy Analytics said.
The 5800 will be only one of a handful of phones that will access the Comes With Music service, which features “millions” of songs, the company said. The other phones are the N95 8GB and 5310 XpressMusic.
-
Yes, thank you for realizing that the jury is still out. However, you assume that the jury is "USA". Have you ever seen the market in Europe or Asia? Do you know how many people have Nokia there and how many have iPhone? You can count the number of iPhone (or like i call it...iCrap) owners there on your fingers. But, if you count the number of Nokia owners in your iPhone calculator application (if it has one), it will run out of digit space.
Anyway, that was my rant about you herd mentality people...oh my friend bought it, i must too! Jeez. get over it...go look at the specs, make an informed decision.
clone? have u looked at the images of the phone? it is not a clone. do u know the definition of clone? clone means an exact copy. how can something better be a clone of icrap? explain that.
regardless, have a nice weekend!
DEX - 2008-3-10 18:22:00 EDT -
wow, that phone looks kinda familiar...it can't be cause it looks exactly
like an iphone can it? I'm really getting sick of seeing what are essentially
iphone clones from different phone companies. There is absolutely zero original thought in the phone market right now by anyone besides Apple
and possibly Google with Android, but the jury is still out on how well it
will work.
Kevin - 2008-3-10 16:20:00 EDT -
I'd like to add some comments on what stephen said in his last line:
"innovative, functional, fun, and easy to use"
Innovative? Touchscreen on a mobile phone you say? Worst "innovation" ever. I have to look at the screen while typing. Slows down typing a lot and can't multi-task.
Functional? The iPhone had a major security flaw the first week it was released. Here is a headline: "A team of computer security consultants say they have found a flaw in Apple’s iPhone that allows them to take control of the device. “Once you did manage to find a hole, you were in complete control.†"
Nice function!!!
Fun? I don't see any fun in touching a screen and typing. As I said, it slows down the typing. Typing is 100 times faster and fun on a normal mobile phone. Fun is different for different people. So, stop thinking if you and your friends think it's fun, then it's fun for everyone. Ahhh...your herd mentality again.
Easy to use? I own an N95. And, I cannot count how many times an iPhone owner asked me on a subway/airplane about how to fix something or access something on their iPhone. If it was easy to use, wouldn't they have figured it out by themselves? There was not a single time I had to refer to any manual or human being to understand how to access any feature on my N95 and I use every feature on it.
Nokia N-Series. 'nuff said.
DEX - 2008-3-10 14:25:00 EDT -
I think it's even more hilarious everytime an iPhone-addict comes out and shows how little they know about mobile phones. You talk about innovation? Apple pretended as if it was the first phone with WIFI internet on it. Nokia N-series phone was released several years before Apple even considered creating a phone and the N-series phones come with WIFI feature on them. Throwing terms like 'obviously copied', 'less groundbreaking', etc. without solid proof is not proving anything. Just because you bought an iPhone by following other people doesn't give you a right to talk rubbish about other phones. iPhone is just another phone by just another company. If you like it, good for you. If you don't, good for you too. Let everyone enjoy whatever phone they like. I personally love the Nokia N-series and don't feel that the iPhone adds has a single feature that I would like or want in a phone. Nokia N-Series is innovative and constantly improving. And, now we have the 5800 XpressMusic which will rock the European cell phone market.
DEX - 2008-3-10 14:14:00 EDT -
I think it's hilarious every time someone tries to put out a product to
compete with the iPhone. The iPhone has already been out for a year,
and this device from Nokia, which only looks like an iPhone, is
obviously copied and less groundbreaking and still way behind, not
even coming to the US until next year. By then, the iPhone will have
advanced even further than it already has. And what's with the Music
service? If people haven't figured out how to get music by now, they're
certainly not waiting for Nokia's music service. Apple took care of that
years ago with the launch of iTunes, and there's plenty of other ways to
get music if you're an Apple hater. Instead of merely trying to copy
Apple products, why don't these companies pay more attention to their
consumers and what they want and develop things that are innovative,
functional, fun and easy to use.
stephen conklin, jr. - 2008-3-10 13:05:00 EDT
Nokia Launches Touchscreen Smartphone
12/15/2008Nokia Launches Touchscreen Smartphone
03/21/2010Nokia Launches Touchscreen Music-Phone
10/02/2008Nokia Launches Touchscreen Music Phone
10/12/2008
VIEW ALL GALLERIES