Nokia 5800 Cell Phone Review - Multimedia
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Marianne Schultz Published on May 08, 2009 Comment on this |
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| Dubbed as the 5800 XpressMusic, we expected phenomenal music capabilities from the 5800. While its music software definitely has everything you need to use the 5800 as your dedicated digital music player, it's not particularly outstanding in any way relative to comparable devices. Video playback is nice on the large screen, but its video organization capabilities are markedly less developed than its music capabilities. | |
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Accessing Music Software (2.59)
If you often need to start some music playing urgently to block out the loud phone conversation the person next to you on the subway is compelled to have on an otherwise quiet train, this will take you a few moments on the Nokia 5800 as you dig through the menu to finally get to a song to start playing. Taking an average of 7.72 seconds to go from the home screen to the moment music starts playing, the 5800 is the slowest among our comparison phones in this test. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.
Dedicated Music Controls (2.0)
For a music-oriented phone, the 5800 doesn't have much in the way of dedicated music controls. Here, we consider only controls that work while on the home screen, not in the music application, and the only buttons that do anything are the volume up and down buttons, and nothing else serves to play, pause, skip, or do anything else to control music playback.
The 5800's default theme does allow any custom shortcuts to be placed on the home screen, but if you switch the theme to the Shortcuts Bar theme, music playing will be shown on the home screen and tapping on this will immediately open the music player where you can access the on-screen controls. Since this on-screen shortcut still doesn't offer direct playback control, we don't award any points for it as we had for the Samsung Memoir that offers something similar but more functional.
Music Software Functionality and Organization (6.8)
When you open the Music folder in the main menu, you are presented with 4 applications: Music Player, Radio, Music Store, and Podcasting. Here, we'll focus on the Music Player, where you'll be able to see and play all of your music files. The main music library view organizes your music into several categories to make it easier to browse: Artists, Albums, Playlists, All Songs, Podcasts, Genres, and Composers. The Music Player will recognize tags on imported music to appropriately organize them, and it had no problem reading the tags on our test MP3, AAC, and WMA music files.
The contents of the Music folder
The Playlists view shows you 3 default playlists to give you quick access to your most played, recently played, and recently added songs. Beyond this, you can create new playlists and edit them as well. Album art is also supported, but the album art must be embedded in the music file to be recognized and displayed automatically. If the album art is a separate file, you can choose to assign it to a selected song or album through the Options menu.
The main view in the Music Player
Aside from the automatic categories visible in the main view, there is no other way to search through or sort your music. When you add new music, your library is automatically updated, though you can also choose to refresh the library through a command in the Options menu. Unfortunately, music cannot be rated to aid in sorting or creating playlists. If you want to back out and do something else, you can go back to the home screen or main menu and continue hearing your music play. If you want to change how your music sounds, you can choose between Bass Booster, Classic, Jazz, Pop, or Rock settings, or create your own custom preset. There are no fancy visualizations to provide you with some eye candy during playback.
The Now Playing screen
Overall, the music player has enough features to make the 5800 a worthy replacement for your dedicated digital music player, though there's nothing earth-shattering about its functionality or interface.
Online Song Downloading (0.0)
As previously noted, there is a Music Store application in the main menu's music file, and opening it directs us to a web page prompting us to select our country from a drop-down list to go to the correct music store. Unfortunately, the U.S. is not in this list and there is currently no specific online store for the 5800 in this country from which to down load music directly to the phone's memory.
Streaming (0.0)
We check a phone's ability to play streamed audio from the web by testing streams offered through the site of a selected radio station. The 5800 was unable to stream audio in any format, including the Real audio format, despite the presence of a Real Player application on the 5800.
Podcast Support (6.0)
Like previous Nokias we've seen, the 5800 has excellent podcast support. Through the Podcasting application in the Music folder, you can find podcasts and subscribe to them, and even set the application to check for new podcasts on a schedule.
The fabulous Podcasting application
Of course, you can still sync podcasts to the 5800 from your computer, but this application offers great flexibility to find and listen to podcasts when you're away from your computer. Among our comparison phones, the iPhone 3G is the only other device that offers direct podcast downloads, though subscriptions can only be managed through iTunes on your computer.
Music Sync with PC (11.0)
The Ovi software that comes with the 5800 can sync your media from your computer to the 5800, and Windows Media will also work to sync music when the 5800 is connected as a USB Mass Storage device. Mac users won't find any software in the box to sync media with their Mac, but Nokia does offer the Nokia Multimedia Transfer application for free on their site to fill this need, which can be found here.
Music Formats and DRM (4.0)
The 5800's manual states that it can play AAC, MP3, and WMA music files and it had no problem playing our test music files in these formats. Though the Nokia Music Store is not yet available in the U.S., the 5800 will also be able to play the DRM-protected WMA files available through the store.
Music Interruption (10.0)
When a call comes in during music playback, the music stops immediately to play the ringtone. After the call has ended or is rejected, music playback picks back up right where it left off. This isn't done as nicely as on the iPhone 3G where the music fades out with an incoming call and then fades in afterward, but it works just fine.
Video Software Access (2.34)
To see how easy the video software is easy to use, we time how long it takes to go from the home screen in the unlocked state to the moment a video is playing. This takes an average of 8.56 seconds on the 5800, putting it in the middle of the pack among our comparison phones. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.
Video Controls (7.0)
Videos play back only in landscape orientation on the 5800 and the on-screen controls are only visible for a few moments at the start of a video and then disappear to leave your view unhindered. Tapping on the screen will bring them up again, where you'll have a pause/play button, skip/fast-forward and skip/rewind buttons, a volume indicator on the left, and a scrub bar at the bottom to show you your location in the video and use to move around within the video. The Options menu offers the ability change the aspect ratio, an option we rarely see, and view video details, and more.
The on-screen controls during video playback
Video Software & Organization (1.5)
The best way to access videos on the 5800 is through the Video Center application, which automatically updates the video library when it's opened. Here, videos are organized into 3 groups: Last watched, My Videos, and Video Feeds. Selecting My Videos will bring you to another grouping, where you can choose to look at lists of All Video Clips, Downloaded, Personal Videos, and Other videos.
The main view in the Video Center
When viewing any organization category, videos can be sorted by date, name, or size. The Options menu offers the ability to do a QWERTY search by video name. Videos cannot be rated, nor can video playlists be created here.
The video menu
Videos can also be viewed and accessed through the Gallery application, where they are mixed in with stored and captured still images. In our view, this is not ideal since it can take some time to find a video among a large collection of pictures and we'd much prefer a separate folder just for videos by default, though you can create one and manually move your videos into a separate folder here if you'd like.
All videos
As mentioned in the Photo Album Software section, you can choose to sort Gallery items by date, title, or size. As in the Video Center application, videos cannot be rated, nor can you create video playlists. Unlike the Video Center application, there is no way to search through videos.
Video Sync with PC (11.0)
The included Ovi software will sync video to the 5800, as will Windows Media Player when the 5800 is connected to your PC as a USB Mass Storage device. As with music synchronization, Mac users will need to use the Nokia Multimedia Transfer software, found here, or drag and drop files via USB.
Video Formats (7.0)
The 5800 could play back our test 3GPP, H.264, MPEG4, Real, and Windows Media files. It would not recognize nor play back our test Flash and QuickTime files. This is better video format compatibility than any of our comparison devices.
Video DRM (0.0)
The 5800 cannot play back any DRM-protected video files.
Video Playback Smoothness (0.0)
The 5800 had no trouble playing back our test video files encoded at various bitrates, matching the performance of the Blackberry Storm and iPhone 3G here.
Online Video Downloading (0.0)
Since the 5800 is sold unlocked in the U.S. without affiliation with a carrier to offer specific video and music services, there is no way to purchase full-length TV shows or movies and download them directly to the 5800. The closest thing available is the Video Service Directory linked through the Video Center application where you can save video feeds to play 20th Century Fox movie trailers, YouTube videos, and more. Since these are feeds that stream video instead of full-length downloads, this capability does not earn the 5800 any points here.
Video Streaming unscored
We don't score video streaming since the standards are disparate but we do check to see if a phone is capable of it by checking out YouTube Mobile and other similar web sites. The 5800 was able to stream video from the Zoovision and the mobile YouTube site, but not from the Windows Media mobile site.
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