Nokia 5800 Long Term Review

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is a smartphone and portable entertainment device by Nokia. It was introduced on October 2, 2008 and released on November 27, 2008. Code-named “Tube”, it is the first touchscreen-equipped S60 device by Nokia. The version being s60v5. It’s part of the XpressMusic series of phones, which emphasizes music and multimedia playback. The touchscreen features tactile feedback. (Wikipedia)

I’ve had a Nokia 5800 for almost a year now. I was really excited when I bought this phone last year. My first touchscreen smartphone! It took some getting used to, having mostly been a Nokia S40 user. It didn’t take long, and in fact now I try to press the screen when I use older phones!

The phone itself does all the usual things and frankly, there are many in-depth reviews out there. Here are a few:

I love this phone. It’s the best phone I’ve ever owned. It’s not perfect by any means but the pros outweigh the cons!

  1. I love the on-screen keyboard for entering texts. It will switch from portait to landscape mode when you turn the phone on it’s side. When I first bought the phone I could use predictive text in both portrait and landscape mode but the latest firmware upgrade changed that. In landscape mode I can’t use predictive text now. That sucks.
  2. The GPS works reasonably well though. Using Windows or Mac OS X software you can download maps for your area to the phone. Unfortunately the GPS chip in the phone is Assisted GPS. It makes a network connection almost every time it needs to find it’s location. I actually bought a data add-on simply because the phone seemed to “leak” data for no apparent reason but it was probably because I had loaded Nokia Maps.
  3. Nokia recently made their navigation system free of charge and it works, sometimes well, sometimes not. Unfortunately it sends us driving in round about ways on occasion. Our journey may be directly down a road but the map told us to cross the river, drive for a bit and then drive across a bridge further up!
  4. The camera is decent enough. It has a flash too. There’s a plastic cover over the lens on the back and unfortunately it cracked. I bought a cheap cover on Amazon but now the light leaks from the flash so I usually disable it when I can.
  5. Reception is very good. Phone calls don’t drop very often, and texts go through all the time. Data calls drop occasionally, and will drop back to Edge if required. No “grip of death”! (har har, bet you’re all sick of that now aren’t you?)
  6. My favourite apps would have to be Gravity, a Twitter application, and Opera Mini for browsing. Opera Mini loads the mobile version of Gmail and Google Reader quickly and display them with little lag. There’s also the free Youtube app which is excellent but I prefer to use a computer for watching videos. I also have numerous free apps and games installed, almost all from the Ovi store.
  7. The Ovi store is Nokia’s application store. It’s basic, but it’s quite good. You can search for apps, and sort and display by different criteria. Only want free apps? There ya go! Installing is a sinch, but it would be nice if they made reviews more accessible. You have to click through to them.
  8. Battery life is pretty good too. If you’re browsing the net and making phone calls it’ll last well over a day but add GPS and suddenly battery life drops like a bomb. If it has to hunt for a signal that hurts too unfortunately.

So, there it is. The Nokia 5800 is an excellent phone. It’s not perfect but I can heartily recommend it.

My next phone? I already bought it. It’s the Samsung Galaxy S, an Android powered smartphone. While the 5800 is an excellent phone it’s showing it’s age. Using the new phone is like moving from Windows 3.11 on a 486 to Windows 95 on a Pentium. Hmm, time to update my analogies?

Mode Pack #6 is apparently coming to Bad…

Mode Pack #6 is apparently coming to Bad Company 2 next week according to this post. No details, and I haven’t checked the BfBC2 store but it fits in with their monthly giveaway of new maps mode packs.

So, we’re not going to see new maps. That’s clear enough already. What would you like to see? If I was a betting man I’d say we’ll get rush on Laguna Alta which could be like rush on White Pass. Alpha will be so close to the attackers deployment battle will be joined as soon as anyone moves an inch.
Or they’ll make a mode pack for SDM or squad rush and everyone will go YAAAAWWWWWNNNNN!

I was just thinking the other day how the lack of a level editor is such a missed opportunity for players. The Doom and Quake series had level editors, other shooters from that era had them too. I remember downloading mods for Doom 2 and having a blast! Are games companies so scared we won’t buy their next big product just because there’s a level editor (and hopefully active community) in a game? Really?
Do they lack the imagination to make a better sequel and feel threatened by amateurs designing levels? Do they think we won’t splash the cash if we have new levels for their old game?

The average age of games players is now in the early thirties. That means they’re probably working, have a family and have (some) disposable income. Sure, getting maps for free is great, but what about a map store? The Apple app store proved that people will buy in their droves if the price is right. Apple make a fortune from it and there’s a huge community around it. People talk all the time about their favourite apps. Why the hell haven’t EA or Activision replicated this for their respective franchises? All we get is what the company blesses and produces itself.

Would you buy maps built by amateurs or even semi-pros who didn’t work for the game publisher? What if they were priced like app store products? US$0.99 for a map?

Such a missed opportunity.

Edit: I forgot about Starcraft II. That has a level editor of some sort doesn’t it?

Use your headphones properly in Bad Company 2!

During a lull between games last night I changed the sound settings in Bad Company 2 from “Home Cinema” to “headphones”. I mistakenly thought that “home cinema” would give a better surround sound effect on my fancy pants headphones. Boy was I wrong!

Now I can hear footsteps better, the whole world sounds so much better. I can hear the wind blowing through the trees. It’s like “War Tapes” but not as overboard on the reverb. In maps where there are an abundance of houses it helps a whole lot as I can hear enemy wandering around upstairs!
It’s like that low noise perk in Modern Warfare 2 that lets you hear footsteps a lot more clearly. Yes, I’m kicking myself that I didn’t try that setting before now.

Bad Company 2 Conquest and SDM last nigh…

Bad Company 2 Conquest and SDM last night for us. Cards needed our help with a video he’s doing but unfortunately Duck can never connect to David’s games. Weird. Anyway, when we got into the game we ended up on the wrong teams so we started jumping around and stuff and gave up. I presume Cards grabbed a few others then.

It was getting late so I started another squad and we hopped into SDM, without David at first but he joined later on another squad and killed Mike and Duck. I dodged him, but still ended up with a bad KDR. I think we won, but definitely won the last game of SDM we played. Despite my crap KDR.

This Reddit thread reminded me of two of our games on Atacama Desert. The enemy grabbed both our helicopters and flew around like mad things! They still didn’t stop us taking all three flags. Duck and myself had lots of fun defending one flag over and over again! Poor Mike had a tough time trying to take down the air vehicles. We won won game decisively, but the second game was lost even though we had all three flags. Those helis did a lot of damage.

Blur tonight, or over the next few days methinks. Excited to try the teamplay games. Will have to unlock that mode first though.

Oh, there was a weird lag in some games. It felt more like the machine struggling to display and run the game rather than network issues. No rubber banding, just a case of stuttering occasionally. The same thing happens to me when I host Onslaught games and the game gets hectic. Anyone else?

Funny moment of the night: I think David spawned on me in the building that normally houses Bravo 2 on Arica Harbour. I spotted an enemy in the next building so I aimed high and tossed a grenade. Ooops. Instead of going through the door it bounced off the wall above it and came right back at us! I dodged out of the blast radius and thankfully it wasn’t hardcore so I didn’t have to worry about teamkills. How we laughed! 🙂

I feel sorry for the team we were playin…

I feel sorry for the team we were playing in Bad Company 2 Rush this evening. We slaughtered them.

Defending on White Pass they didn’t make it past the first base. They started by shooting RPGs into Bravo and when I had little success shooting back I flanked around by heading up the construction site. You can practically see into their spawn from there! They didn’t expect it at all! It’s also a good idea to run behind the construction site up on the hill. Quite a few attackers were headed that way and were easy kills. Got a nice 15/9 game out of that.

There was some C4 whoring too, and in the next game we were attacking on Arica Harbour, both crates were taken out by C4. I quit then, mainly because it’s so late but that really bugged me too. Pity teamkills were’t possible because I pumped a clip into the back of that recon.

Playing with Sulley, Duck and Red Dragons. Wish we could have bigger squads or party chat like on Xbox Live because Mike and Conor logged in too. Bah.

My KDR has increased to 0.84 and win/loss has jumped from 1.52 to 1.57. Woo!

Military Show at Cork City Gaol

Some photos from the military show at Cork City Gaol today. It’s also on tomorrow and well worth a visit!

I got to try out the red dot sight on an M416, see a Scar-L up close, and even checked out an M60 too. All replica air guns, without ammo unfortunately. There was a target range but there was a long queue for it. Maybe next time because my 3 yro son was disappointed the guns didn’t work!

I have a few more photos on my phone which I’ll upload tomorrow.

It’s kinda crazy having different usern…

It’s kinda crazy having different usernames on XBL and PSN so I’m going to send a load of friend requests to my current friends list on PSN from a new “xeer2000” account I registered a while back.

Now, if only I could think up pronounceable usernames so random strangers don’t stumble over my name …

Oh, since I’ve built up a mid-level character on BfBC2 I’m going to use donnchaoc for playing that but xeer2000 for any other games. Friend Requests will be flying out the door over the next day or so!

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