Nokia 5800, Comes With Music to launch 20 March
Nokia has announced that its first mass-market touchscreen phone and all-you-can-eat subscription music service will launch in Australia on 20 March.
Nokia today announced that its first mass-market touchscreen phone and all-you-can-eat subscription music service will launch in Australia on 20 March.
The 5800 XpressMusic handset and Comes With Music (CWM) service will be bundled together when they are sold by carriers in Australia. The carriers will have the option to sell the service with either 12- or 18-month durations and the recommended retail price for these bundles will be AU$979 and AU$1,109 respectively. Carriers will likely subsidise this cost into standard service contracts.
Comes With Music launched first in the UK at the end of 2008, offering Nokia customers unlimited access to download music tracks from the Nokia Music Store for the length of the subscription. Comes With Music is different from other music services, including Nokia's own subscription service through its store, in that CWM allows you to keep all the music you download in this period after the subscription ends.
All music purchased through Nokia's store is delivered in DRM-protected Windows Media Audio files (WMA) at a 192Kbps bitrate. The tracks customers download after subscribing to Comes With Music will be restricted to play back on the CWM handset they've purchased and one authorised PC. Mac support for the service will not be available at launch.
Nokia reps confirmed that CWM downloads will be "absolutely unlimited", noting that there will be no fair-use policy applied to CWM subscriptions.
The 5800 XpressMusic is the first phone to run on Nokia's latest Series 60 touchscreen-capable operating platform. Alongside its music playing capabilities, the 5800 will support HSDPA data transfers and features a 3.2-megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss designed optics system.