Nokia 5800 on the way March 17, 2009
Posted by a1291762 in : 5800 , add a commentSo there’s a Nokia 5800 on the way here but it’s not for me.
This one is for Bree. She really wants it and since it seems like local phones won’t be available without “comes with music” we went for an import model. With any luck it’ll be here before the official launch.
I did noticed something rather sloppy about the stores selling this phone.
Most listed an incomplete or incorrect description. The phone may be quad-band GSM (which they got right) but it is also a 3G phone and the frequencies it uses are important (since there’s 2 models and one works on Telstra/NextG while the other works on the other 3G networks). Most shops failed to mention this and one shop utterly failed to comprehend why I might want to know which model they had (though I think most shops have the “everyone else” version since NextG uses US frequencies and that phone is newer and hence more expensive).
The official phone package comes with an 8GB micro SD card. Most shops failed to mention this. Some even appeared to be removing the card so they could sell you one with the phone!
In the end I went with Mobicity because they actually seem to have a clue about what they are doing. They weren’t the cheapest but their shipping was about half the price the other shops were charging so they weren’t too far off the mark.
Anyway, Bree says I can play with this phone a bit so I’ll definitely be trying out some Qt/S60 development on it.
Palm Pre vs Nokia 5800 XpressMusic March 9, 2009
Posted by a1291762 in : 5800, computers, pre , add a commentSo I’m just not that into the iPhone and the Pre hasn’t materialized yet. Palm’s delay could cause them to lose a fan because my eye has been caught by the 5800.
Working at Nokia means that I get to see various prototype devices. If it wasn’t for this, I would probably not even know what a 5800 was. I saw one at the office, got to play with it and even though it was a prototype running pre-release software I was impressed.
The UI is no iPhone/webOS killer but I’ve always been a function over form guy. Symbian/S60 is a solid platform capable of getting the job done. If I need it, there’s StyleTap for running my legacy Palm apps (an option the Pre cannot have while apps must be written in JavaScript).
Development is superior to webOS. I’ve tried to get excited about Mojo but it’s really hard. In contrast the 5800 will run native code and thanks to Qt for S60 I’ll be able to use an API I’m already familiar with. The only downside could be a need to use a Windows machine for development. Hopefully this will let me avoid that though.
The phone comes with 8GB of removable storage (“something or other”-SD). There are already 16GB cards available for that slot too. Not that I necessarily think I’ll need more than 8GB of storage but knowing I have that option is certainly nice.
The 5800 officially goes on sale in Australia in 11 days.