Nokia 5800 and Nokia N97 MODERN TOUCH

WHO likes touchscreen phones
should be excited; the biggest brand in the industry has brought out not one, but TWO mobile phones: the sexy Nokia 5800 and the unbelievably mind-blowing Nokia N97.

Memories best forgotten - Nokia touchscreens in history

Many people are under the incorrect assumption that the Nokia 5800 is the first touchscreen phone to wear the Nokia label. It isn't. Quite the opposite, in fact, there's been several touchy-feely phones released under the Nokia name. Beginning with the 7700, we've seen a couple of Nokia mobile phones which are controlled by you pressing directly on the screen. They all had reasonably big (for their time) screens, but unfortunately, they shared something else: they were irredeemably rubbish. Just one of those mobile phones, the 6708, displayed a modicum potential, but that was made exclusively to be sold in China, and so, it never saw the light of day in the UK. Unfortunately, that meant that the phones we got were total, utter bobbins.

However, those bad memories have all been exorcised by the launch of a pair of new Nokia mobile phones, both of which have touchscreens, and both of which are much, much nicer...

Nokia 5800 - play that funky music

First on the roster is a completely new member of Nokia's Xpress family of music mobile phones, the mouth-watering Nokia 5800. This one's quite obviously built for music and media, as it has a separate XpressMedia touch-key that brings up a list of shortcuts to music, videos, the web, and more. Then, of course, the Nokia 5800 has a 3.2 inch touchscreen, to let you use those different media files. Basically, the Nokia 5800 was created to be a teeny handheld jukebox and movie player, and as music handsets go, this is easily one of the sexiest. The Nokia 5800 also comes with a 3 megapixel camera, HSDPA data connection and GPS, so that it's a brilliant all-rounder, on top of being a superb media player. Oh, and it's got a strap to clip on an imitation guitar pick. Pointless, but brilliant.

Despite all those features, the Nokia 5800 is very definitely a mid-range handset; it's not, nor was it ever meant to be, a full-on top-ender. That position falls to a different handset...

Nokia N97 - super-powered and ready to rock

With the Nokia 5800 on course to deliver touch-based mobile phones to the mid-range market, that leaves a huge, yawning gap at the very top-end, and yes, there IS a touch-based mobile phone on its way to take its place as the top-end powerhouse: the frankly awesome Nokia N97. This takes the same Symbian S60 Touch interface and crams it within the frame of a proper, full-fat smartphone. So it's got a massive, 3.5 inch screen, a slide 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 genuinely as powerful as the rumours had us believe, with HSDPA, GPS, digital compass, and built-in Flash, meaning you have an internet experience that tops any other mobile phones! Put it like this: the Nokia N97 is awesome. It easily outdoes other mobile phones and while the Nokia 5800 angles firmly for the mid-range, I'm predicting that the Nokia N97 will utterly DOMINATE the world in 2009!