Nokia battles iPhone with 5800 series

AS arrangements advanced for the launch of latest from the shelf of mobile handset manufacturer, Nokia in Africa before the year ends, the firm may have indicated its battle-ready with media unveiling of 5800 series as it plans to take the fight to Apple’s iPhone to another height.

Nokia 5800 comes with the first ever touch-screen identity from the mobile manufacturer.

Obviously taken a cue from Apple in its design of the 5800 Xpress Music, formerly known as “Tube” Nokia disclosed the device is due for release by year’s end.
With looks quite similar to Apple’s iPhone, Nokia 5800 has a single panel of smooth glass on the front.

Running on Symbian’s Series 60 OS, Nokia said it plans to modify 5800 to make the software more user-friendly in agreement with the aim of releasing alongside a software development kit.

Giving this insight, the senior vice president, marketing at Nokia, Mr. Jo Harlow, said at the recently held media launch event in London, that the idea is to make the product a human interface.

“We wanted to turn the user interface into a human interface,” he said.
On the software side, the 5800 has a “contacts bar” that shows images of frequently contacted friends. Those friends can be sent text messages directly from the home screen. Also, feeds could be assigned to those friends that would alert the device’s user to new content on social-networking sites.

“It also has a drop-down media bar that gives one-touch access to music, photos, video or the Internet,” he said.

In addition, the 5800 would support Adobe Flash multimedia technology, which is reportedly not supported by the iPhone.

While many websites have created mobile versions of their sites to support the iPhone’s capabilities, the 5800 could potentially work with many more websites without modification.

“I know some people thought Flash wasn’t important on a mobile device,” Harlow said, in a clear reference to Apple.

Like the iPhone, the 5800 has a software keyboard rather than a tactile one. Apple’s software keyboard could at times be difficult to manipulate since it requires a person’s fingertip to touch the screen.

Harlow noted that the 5800’s soft keyboard would work with a fingernail or even a guitar pick in addition to a finger.

The report further said that when slanted on its side, the 5800 has a full-screen QWERTY keyboard plus a mini-QWERTY one. The 5800 is also equipped with handwriting recognition, which will recognize 60 languages, which Harlow said would cover about 90 per cent of the world’s mobile-phone users.

Nokia also said the 5800 has built-in surround-sound speakers, which are louder than any other mobile device on the market. Nokia let those attending the launch try out the 5800’s speakers in a soundproof booth. The 5800 has a 3.2-megapixel camera with a dual flash and a Carl Zeiss lens. The 5800’s screen supports 16 million colours, which Harlow claimed is best in the industry.



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