Nokia has announced its long awaited Nokia 5800 XpressMusic phone. The Nokia 5800 (codenamed the Tube) will not only compete with the likes of Apple iPhone, HTC Touch Diamond & Samsung Omnia, it will also eat into the market share of Nokia’s very own N-Series due to its unbelievable price of 279 Euro.
When Apple announced its iPhone 3G for a subsidised price of $199 in the US earlier this year, there were expectations that it would be made available in markets like India at a fairly cheap unsubsidised price as well; which would have forced other manufacturers like Nokia to drop their prices to compete with the iPhone. However that was not to be as Apple decided to price its unsubsidised iPhone 3G very expensively. Now its an opportunity for Nokia to lead the price war by announcing a touchscreen phone at a relatively cheap price!
So far Nokia has not done great with touchscreen models with its only two releases, the 7710 and the 6708 disappointing to say the least and it was only the iPhone which prompted Nokia to relaunch touchscreen phones in the market.
Nokia 5800: Complete in Features
The Nokia 5800 comes equipped with an impressive 3.2-inch TFT touchscreen which supports touch as well as stylus input. It comes loaded with a 3.15 MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics, flash, autofocus and VGA video recording at 30 fps. Its Music player and FM radio is well complemented with Stereo Loudspeakers.
Other features include GPS, Wi-fi connectivity, Accelerometer, 3.5 mm audio jack & TV-Out port. Battery life is also sufficient with up to 9 hours of talktime and 35 hours of music playback. A 8GB memory card comes in the box with support for extendable memory.
Comparison with Other Touchscreen Phones: The Price Factor
| Nokia 5800 | iPhone 3G | HTC Touch Diamond | Samsung Omnia | SE Xperia X1 |
|
| Platform | Symbian | Apple | WM 6.1 | WM 6.1 | WM 6.1 |
| Price(INR) | 18,000* | 31,000 | 26,000 | 37,000 | 40,000 |
* Estimated price based on announced price of 279 Euro
Instead of going through complicated & lengthy comparison tables, it would suffice to say that there is no feature present in any of the competitors which is absent in the Nokia 5800. You might miss a few things here and there like the 5 MP camera on the Samsung Omnia, the slide out QWERTY keypad on the SE Xperia X1 and the capacitative touch implementation of the iPhone; but that’s about it.
And at an unbelievably low pricing of 279 Euro, the Nokia 5800 just blows the competition away by being real value for money.
Comparison with Nokia N-Series: An Internal War
We fail to understand how Nokia will sustain its own products, especially its N-Series range of mobiles once the Nokia 5800 is introduced in the market.
| Nokia 5800 | Nokia N95 8GB | Nokia N85 | Nokia N96 | |
| Price (INR) | 18,000* | 24,500 | 24,000 | 33,000 |
* Estimated price based on announced price
Again, it would suffice to say that if there is any feature in the Nokia 5800 which is lower in comparison to its N-Series brethren, it is just the 3.15 MP camera. All the N-Series phones mentioned above have 5 MP cameras loaded.
We see no reason why anybody would want to spend much more than the price of the Nokia 5800 on a comparatively inferior product unless someone really prefers a phone with a physical keypad instead of touchscreen; or if a 5 MP camera is absolutely necessary.
Even the recently announced Nokia N79 and N85 will have their job cut out against the Nokia 5800. Either Nokia will have to drastically reduce the prices of its N-Series phones, or hope that there are enough number of customers in that bracket who do not like touchscreen phones.
Conclusion
Nokia isn’t willing to call the Nokia 5800 its flagship product and is instead preferring to call it as a mid-end device. As far as we can see, the 3.15 MP camera is the only component of the phone which can be considered as mid-end. All other features of the Nokia 5800 are absolute top-end, make no mistake about it. What more can they put into their flagship touchscreen besides a 5 MP camera with xenon flash?
In all likelihood, this phone will sell like hot cakes once its available so better buy one when it is released before Nokia runs out of stock!
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