The World of Touch Phones – Nokia 5800 and Nokia N97

Matt Sharp asked:

Never before has history seen such a wealth of touchscreen phones been seen, with every manufacturer offering at least one. Finnish giant, Nokia, though are offering two: the brilliant 5800, and the absolutely mind-blowing Nokia N97.

Nokia 5800 - exorcising the demons of the past

A lot of people seem to be under the false impression that the Nokia 5800 is the first ever touchscreen mobile phone to come from the Finnish manufacturer. It isn't. The opposite's true, because there's been a few touchy-feely phones to wear the Nokia brand. Starting at the 7700, the world has seen a couple of Nokia mobile phones that work by you pressing directly on the screen. They had a relatively big (for the time) touchscreen in common, but the other feature they had in common, unfortunately, was that they were irredeemably awful. However, those unpleasant recollections have all been exorcised because of the debut of two new Nokia mobile phones, both of which have touch-sensitive displays, and both of which are much, much more alluring...

First on the roster is a whole new member of Nokia's Xpress range of music mobile phones, the mouth-watering Nokia 5800. This phone is pretty obviously designed for music and video; you can tell by the dedicated XpressMedia touch-key that pops up a list of links to music, videos, the web, and more. Oh, and the Nokia 5800 has a 3.2 inch touch-sensitive display, to actually play with all your media content. Essentially, the Nokia 5800 was designed as a teeny portable entertainment centre, and as music devices go, this is easily one of the prettiest. The Nokia 5800 has also got a 3 megapixel camera, HSDPA data access and GPS, so that it's a superb all-round mobile phone, as well as a superb media box. Oh, and it's got a lanyard to clip on an imitation guitar pick. That's pretty cool, that.

However, the Nokia 5800 is very definitely a mid-range phone; it isn't, nor was it ever meant to be, an absolute top-ender. That job goes to a different mobile...

Nokia N97 - can any phone beat this monster?

With the Nokia 5800 on track to deliver touch-based mobile phones to the mid-range market, that leaves a massive gap at the very top-endof the product range; well, there IS a touch-based mobile phone on its way to fill that gap: the frankly mind-blowing Nokia N97. This uses the same Symbian S60 Touch interface and packs it inside the shell of a proper, full-tilt smartphone. So it has a massive, 3.5 inch screen, a flip out QWERTY keypad, and the camera's been upgraded to 5 megapixels. The Nokia N97 is, as should be glaringly obvious, destined to be the new flagship Nseries mobile phone, and it's truly as high-spec as we'd heard from rumours, with HSDPA, sat-nav, digital compass, and built-in Flash, so that you have an internet experience like no other mobile phones! Put simply the Nokia N97 is simple incredible. It gleefully relieves itself over other mobile phones and while the 5800 aims to take over the mid-range, I reckon that the Nokia N97 will completely DOMINATE the world in 2009!

Touch Phones