Last week I found myself chatting with Antony Ribot (of Ribot fame), and was able to grab some time with ‘the touchscreen Nokia whose number eluded us’. (If you’re curious, it’s the memorably-named 5800 XpressMusic.) I’ll admit that my time with the device was short - probably no more than a few minutes - but a fascinating look at mobiles away from the iPhone, something I’d love to do were the funds or time available for me to do so.
The 5800 has, like almost every other touchscreen phone that’s not an iPhone, some form of haptic feedback: a subtle vibrate when you tap something on screen. The haptic feedback was somewhat alien to me, though does indeed make sense - particularly if someone’s using a touchscreen for the first time as it instils at least a little more faith that the device is, actually, responding.
One of my main interests in the 5800 was the touchscreen’s behaviour itself: we’re presented with touchscreens in more situations than ever before (ticket machines at train stations, for example) and quite frankly most of them absolutely suck: they’re either really slow to respond; placed at a highly inconvenient angle so that when you attempt to enter (for example) Petersfield, you’re instead stuck with Lsf-oh-bollocks-it’s-not-really-working; or worse, all of the above.
The problem with the Nokia’s touchscreen was that it didn’t seem to respond all that well. I’d tap somewhere in an attempt to select a menu option - and nothing would happen. Then, I’d tap again - and still nothing would happen. So, trying for a third time, I used the absolute tip of a finger: not a stab of the thumb you can use on the iPhone, a painfully-delicate and gentle prod with the side of my thumb. Perhaps, in hindsight, it’s not so surprising that Nokia include a stylus that slides out from the casing of the device. Ahem.
It’s not that I loathed the Nokia 5800. Really, it isn’t entirely terrible. But with that touchscreen, and plastic that felt even cheaper than the iPhone 3G, there’s no way I’d consider buying one without spending significantly more time trying one beforehand.
Posted on Monday April 13th, 2009
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