Anyone who likes touchscreen phones should be excited; the most well known brand in the industry has waded in with not one, but TWO mobile phones: the sexy Nokia 5800 and the utterly jaw-dropping Nokia N97.
Phones we'd rather forget – Nokia's early attempts at a touchscreen phone
Most people are under the false impression that the Nokia 5800 is the first touchscreen mobile phone Nokia have ever made. It's not. Quite the opposite, in fact, there's been several touchy-feely phones released under the Nokia brand. Starting with the 7700, there have been a few Nokia mobile phones which 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 unbearably rubbish. Just one of those handsets, the 6708, displayed a modicum promise, but it was made solely to be sold in China, and thus, it wasn't meant for us in the UK. Unfortunately, that meant that the phones we got were total, and complete toss.
However, those bad mental images have now been exorcised because of the debut of two new Nokia mobile phones, both of which come with touchscreens, and both of which are much, much nicer...
Nokia 5800 - if music be the food of love...
The first phone up is a totally new member of Nokia's Xpress range of music mobile phones, the mouth-watering Nokia 5800. This phone is quite obviously built for music and media, as it has a dedicated XpressMedia touch-key which opens a list of shortcuts to music, videos, the web, and so on. Then, of course, the Nokia 5800 has a 3.2 inch touch-sensitive display, to let you use those different media files. Essentially, the Nokia 5800 was created as a teeny portable entertainment centre, and as music phones go, this is easily one of the prettiest. The Nokia 5800 also has, built-in, a 3 megapixel camera, HSDPA internet access and sat-nav, making it a superb all-round mobile phone, as well as a brilliant media player. Oh, and it's got a lanyard to fasten on a fake guitar plectrum. That's pretty cool, that.
However, the Nokia 5800 is very definitely a mid-range device; it isn't, nor was it ever meant to be, an absolute top-ender. That role belongs to a different mobile...
Nokia N97 - the single best phone EVER made?
With the Nokia 5800 on course to bring touchscreen mobile phones to the mid-range market, that leaves a huge, yawning gap at the absolute top-end, and yes, there IS a touchscreen mobile phone waiting to be unleashed to fill that gap: the frankly mind-blowing Nokia N97. This uses the same Symbian S60 Touch interface and packs it into the frame of a proper, full-on smartphone. Which means it has a bigger, 3.5 inch screen, a flip out QWERTY keypad, and the camera now weighs in at a meaty 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 powerful as the rumours had us believe, with HSDPA, GPS, digital compass, and integrated Flash, so that you get an internet experience like no other mobile phones! Put it like this: the Nokia N97 is simple incredible. It easily outdoes other mobile phones and while the Nokia 5800 aims firmly for the mid-range, I'm predicting that the Nokia N97 will completely DESTROY the competition next year!
