As someone asked me to do a comparison in another thread, here it is, the Nokia 5800 compared to the Nokia N800/N810.

First of all, I don't think they are really direct rivals at all. Their physical size is very, very different. The 5800 is more-or-less the same size as an ordinary mobile phone, it's much narrower than the iPhone and much smaller than the tablets.

Unlike the tablets, the 5800 works in both vertical and horizontal mode, with automatic screen rotation choosing the correct mode when you tilt the phone.

For me the 5800's narrowness is a big bonus because it means I can use the phone in vertical mode with one hand, something that matters a lot to me and is important in a mainstream phone. Hang around any city centre and you'll see lots of people using their phones one-handed.

Some articles will tell you a stylus is required for the 5800, but I didn't find that to be the case, in fact I haven't used the stylus at all. The interface is designed to be operated with the phone held in one hand and the thumb selecting stuff from the screen.

The 5800's screen resolution is a bit like the main part of the N800/N810 screen with all the status bars removed. Here is the 5800 and N810 showing maemo.org at 100%:



Despite its much smaller size, the 5800's screen is still pretty high res at 640 x 360, which is better than the iPhone and the PlayStation Portable. It's not as good as the N800/N810's 800 x 480 though...

The 5800's default browser is webkit-based so it's technically much closer to the iPhone's browser than the N800/N810's. Unlike the iPhone though, the 5800 has Flash support including Flash video, and here it is displaying Homestar Runner:



The browser also works in vertical mode:



As it's a mobile phone, the 5800 has lots of PIM stuff that the tablets don't have, for example a built-in calendar, to-do list etc etc. Weirdly though it doesn't have a paint application, something the tablets have always had.

E-mail support is broadly similar to the tablets, with POP/IMAP and the option of adding push clients. However the 5800's built-in e-mail client isn't very good, it's basically just an extension of the text messaging application. Dedicated third party clients are available though, and Nokia's got a proper e-mail client in public beta.

The 5800 has two cameras, a 3.2 megapixel autofocus at the back (which can also shoot VGA video at 30fps), and a tablet-style webcam on the front for videophone calls. Although the 5800's main camera is a lot better than the tablet cameras, it's not up to Nokia's usual high standards found on their higher end Nseries models and many have been disappointed by how grainy the 5800's pictures are by comparison.

There's no physical keyboard on the 5800 (though there is on the upcoming N97) but interestingly the text entry methods are virtually identical to those on the N800: Large virtual QWERTY for fingers, small virtual QWERTY for stylus, handwriting/gesture recognition. Added to those is a fourth mode, virtual keypad, which replicates the working of an ordinary phone keypad and is useable with one hand. I suspect Nokia learnt a lot from their tablets when designing the touch-based S60 interface.

However, the 5800 doesn't have a predictive QWERTY mode, which. coupled with the smaller physical screen size, makes text entry more tricky than on the tablets.

The 5800's GPS is ONE MILLION TRILLION times better than the N810's. The 5800 actually locks on, it locks on every time, all it needs is to be in a room with some windows, and it can lock on when you're moving too. It locks on very quickly, about 30 seconds at most, thanks to a combination of assisted GPS and phone mast location, and the maps download dynamically or can be pre-loaded from your PC. You have to pay extra if you want turn-by-turn guidance, but everything else is free as Nokia own the mapping company (Navteq).

Here's the GPS in hybrid satellite/map mode:



The 5800's music player is a tiny bit easier to use than the default tablet player, but isn't hugely different. There are third party players available too.

There's a built-in podcasting application which lets you search podcast databases and online OPML directories, and subscribe to podcasts which download directly onto the computer without the use of a computer.

There are LOTS of free third party themes available on sites like mobile9 and babinokia. Here are a couple:





The 5800 video player is easier to use than the default tablet player, as it has the video in full-screen by default and only displays controls when they're needed (for example if the video is paused, or if you touch the screen):



If you do the transcoding correctly the videos can use almost all the screen resolution, and it feels like having an HDTV in your pocket. Alternatively, you can just use most video files "as is" without any conversion, though they probably won't be optimised for the device. There's no OGG/DivX/Xvid support by default though.

The main interface is an evolution of previous S60 versions, partly because there's a very large incumbent userbase (more than all other smartphone platforms put together) and partly to allow backwards compatibility with older S60 applications. It's slightly confusing to use at first because some icons require one touch and others require two, due to its focus-based nature. However, you do get used to it as it's basically the same principles used by desktop PC interfaces, where you click once to select an item and click again to activate it, or click somewhere else (such as on the "delete" button) to do something else with that item.

Like all S60 phones the 5800 has proper multitasking, which can be accessed by holding down the menu key to make the task switcher appear:



Currently Maemo easily beats the 5800 on app numbers. 5800 applications are a bit thin on the ground as this is a totally new OS version, Symbian 9.4/S60 5th Edition, but many S60 3rd Edition apps will work on the 5800 without any problems. It's a bit unpredictable which S60 3rd apps work though, so it's best to just try them and see. Hopefully the S60 5th application scene will pick up as more S60 5th devices are released (it's not just Nokia making them, Samsung and Sony Ericsson also have S60 5th phones in development).

And, of course, maemo totally beats the 5800 on open source. Open source apps for the 5800 are virtually non-existent right now, and Ovi Store is (so far) only open to commercial companies or self-employed individuals. Companies are allowed to give games away for free, but they have to have a registered tax number in order to become accepted as a publisher (there's no publisher membership fee though). The publisher agreement has provisions for open source releases though, so there's nothing to stop a commercial company publishing an open source application through Ovi Store.

Ovi Store is launching next month, and the Symbian OS is due to go open source next year (see the symbian.org website for more details on this), so the software situation may change radically over the next year or two.

Incidentally didn't someone say that Ovi Store would be available on maemo too? There's nothing to stop that because it's already going multiplatform by being launched on both Symbian S60 and NokiaOS Series 40 devices.

Getting back to the 5800, overall it's a great device for the price tag. It's half the price of the iPhone, and it's quite a bit cheaper than the N810 was when it launched, so it's clearly aimed at a much more mainstream audience than these devices. The 5800 is a phone above all else, it's been built from the ground up to be a phone, and is one of the very few touchscreen devices which can be comfortably used with one hand. I think that's why it will find its audience fairly easily, because it's been designed with a particular audience in mind.

That's what needs to happen to maemo, Nokia (or another hardware manufacturer) need to put maemo into a device that is squarely aimed at a specific market: mini-laptop, mobile phone, games console, music player... anything as long as it is marketed as serving a specific purpose. I'm not saying they should drop any features, I just mean they need to emphasise development of particular features, just like the iPod Touch emphasises media playback despite having the ability to do a lot of other things too.

That's been the N800/N810's biggest problem IMHO, shops and their customers find it difficult to know what they're for. They might be tempted to buy one, but they need to be given a solid excuse for actually going through with the purchase (i.e. a specific purpose in their life that the device will serve).