I have had the Nokia 5800XM for about two months now and so far I have mixed feelings about it. It’s no where near as good as the Nokia N95, which was by far the best smartphone on the planet and which I raved about for two and a half years.

Obviously the N95 was an N-Series smartphone and the 5800 is Nokia’s first real touch screen and they have tried to give it a music feel to it. Not sure it really comes across as a music phone, as the music player is okay, or very similar to the N95 in what it does and shows on the screen.

I am not sure if Nokia made this phone and hoped it would compete against the iPhone or the Blackberry Storm or all the other new touch screen models out there. So the iPhone touch interface is slightly better, but that is about it for the iPhone as it doesn’t come close to this phone in terms of features.

The things I don’t like about the 5800XM:

1. Most definitely the touch screen or touch experience. The lack of buttons is a big thing for me. (If it had buttons and touch screen then maybe).
2. Texting which I do a lot of is now a pain in the arse, because the touch screen forces you to look at the screen, where as with a normal keys it was quite easy to feel your way around the keypad and type fast.
3. Typing is a lot slower, because of the touch screen, and one has to hit the screen quite hard and it has to be in the area of the letter.
4. The camera is only a 3mp, and doesn’t take great photos (if compared to the N95).

What I like about the phone:

1. Even though it’s not an N-Series phone, it’s got all the connectivity features of my old N95 (wireless, fast internet, 3G, Edge, HSDPA, A2DP bluetooth etc).
2. It supports SD cards up to 16GB. Very handy for storing music and videos.
3. It’s plays video in a lovely widescreen format, and watching videos is a pleasure.
4. It’s running the latest Symbian software, which is a pleasure to use.
5. There are hundreds if not thousands of Apps (lot of free apps as well).
6. There are many applications that work really well with the touch screen, such as Google Maps, LastFM, FoneFood, FriendView etc.

What I have loaded on the phone at present in terms of applications:

1. X-Plore (brilliant).
2. PhoneTorch (brilliant).
3. ScreenSnap (brilliant).
4. SMS Timer (brilliant) – allows one to schedule SMS’s, excellent if you don’t want to send a SMS immediately.
5. AccuWeather (brilliant).
6. PhotoBrowser – funky browser with magnifying glass. (Nice Gimmick).
7. TagReader – Microsoft’s barcode reader (Very Clever).
8. BarCode – Nokia’s barcode reader (Very Clever).
9. Split the bill – Very useful if you dine in large groups and have the habbit of splitting the bill.
10. Google Maps, Google Search, Google Calendar, Google Documents, Google Translate, Gmail – All very useful applications which I use daily.
11. Soft Touch Stop Watch.
12. Friend View which uses the GPS to pinpoint you and your friends. (Very useful).
13. Nokia Maps.
14. Metro de Paris, NYC Subways maps.
15. FoneFood – A very clever and useful app from Lastminute.com – used to find restaurants in whatever area you might be in.
16. MyPhone – Ha Ha this is a classic application! It’s called “Exceeding iPhone” and they have somehow managed to use the iPhone UI (user interface) on the 5800XM. So you have a Nokia 5800 with an iPhone interface. It’s darn clever. Check out their website.
17. Bounce (game).
18. RT GR (game).
19. SudokuMaster (game).
20. Checkers (game).
21. MR2 (game).
22. Sensitive (game).
23. Solitaire (game).
24. Shuffle Shock (game).
25. Quickblock (game).
26. R.Bubbles (game).