Why You Can Trust CNET Nokia 5800 Navigation Edition (Unlocked) review: Nokia 5800 Navigation Edition (Unlocked)
Nokia 5800 Navigation Edition (Unlocked)
Nokia 5800 Navigation Edition (Unlocked)
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
Editors' note: For this review, we will focus on the GPS functionality of the Nokia 5800 Navigation Edition in the Features section, since this the main differentiator between it and the XpressMusic version of the 5800. To learn more about the other features of this phone, please read our full review of the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic Edition.
GPS on cell phones is no longer an emerging trend. It's almost a must-have feature nowadays, and more and more handsets are offering it. However, taking advantage of GPS, and the navigation powers that come with it, usually comes at a price. If you want features, such as voice-guided directions, you often have to subscribe to a location-based service--TeleNav, for example--which require a subscription fee. That's why it was such big news when Google announced that it would offer all of this for free with Google Maps Navigation. Well it's not just Google anymore; Nokia has also entered the fray.
In late January, Nokia announced that it will offer its Ovi Maps with Navigation for free on all its GPS-enabled smartphones. The Nokia 5800 Navigation Edition is actually one of the handsets that already offered a free license to Ovi Maps with the purchase of the phone, and at a reasonable price at that: $299 unlocked. For this price, not only do you get a decent navigator, but also a solid phone and multimedia device as well. There are bumps in the road, though. The Nokia 5800 doesn't have the most intuitive user interface, and we found route recalculations to be a bit slow. Also, you don't get quite the power or functionality of the Motorola Droid. However, if your lifestyle requires you to travel frequently and you crave the freedom of an unlocked phone, the Nokia 5800 Navigation Edition is worth a look.
Design
When it comes to design, there's very little difference between the music and navigation editions of the Nokia 5800. There's a slight variation in bezel color, but otherwise, the physical attributes are the same with the phone measuring in at 4.37 inches tall by 2.03 inches wide by 0.61 inch thick and 3.84 ounces. Though slightly on the thicker side, it's remarkably light so it won't weigh you down in your travels. The backside also features a soft-touch finish to give the phone a bit more texture and prevents it from feeling too plasticky or slick.
The sides on the handset house several controls. On the left spine, you'll find the SIM card and microSD expansion slots, both of which are protected by attached covers. The right side has a volume rocker, a lock switch, and a camera activation/capture button. There are also Talk and End keys and a main menu button just below the display, but you'll use the 5800's 3.2-inch resistive touch screen for most of your interaction with the phone.
With a 640x360-pixel resolution and support for 16 million colors, the display is satisfyingly clear and bright. The screen does wash out a bit in bright sunlight, but it's not a huge issue when mounted in the car. Instead, the challenge there is viewing maps on the smaller screen. There is a built-in accelerometer so you can rotate the phone and view maps, Web pages, photos and so forth in landscape mode, and we experienced very little lag when switching between modes.
The touch screen is responsive, but we have complaints about the user interface, just like we did with the XpressMusic version and the Nokia N97. To start, the onscreen dial pad doesn't show corresponding letters on the number keys, which makes it rather difficult if you're trying to spell a contact's name to call up from the phonebook or when you need to dial a number with letters in it (e.g., 1-866-402-CNET). Also, some menu items respond to single taps, but others require two taps; only after some use do you learn that icons only need one tap whereas list items need two. There are other annoyances like the uneven scrolling experience, all of which you can get accustomed to over time, but it's a tough pill to swallow when there are so many other more intuitive and simpler touch-screen phones out there.
Finishing out the Nokia 5800's design is Micro-USB port, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a power connector, and a power button on top. Also, above the display, there's a small touch-sensitive XpressMusic button, which will bring up a launch bar for the phone's various multimedia options, including the music player, photo and video gallery, Web browser, and online services (e.g., Flickr, Vox, Ovi).
The Navigation Edition of the Nokia 5800 comes packaged with a USB cable, a cradle and vehicle mount, a car charger, an 8GB microSD card, a wired stereo headset, an audio adapter, a wrist strap, a software CD, and reference material. Though our review didn't come with an AC adapter, Nokia's site says one is included in the box. Also, the car mount requires a bit of assembly, so have a Phillips screwdriver nearby. The cradle itself securely holds the phone in place, but the suction cup mount only works for the windshield, which is fine for most people, but still, we wish there was a dashboard option. For more add-ons, please check our cell phone accessories, ringtones, and help page.
Features
Recently, Nokia announced that it will offer Ovi Maps with Navigation for free on all its GPS-enabled smartphones. Previously, you had to pay monthly or yearly license fee to get voice-guided navigation as well as premium content, but now it's all gratis. In the case of the Nokia 5800 Navigation Edition, this isn't quite as big of a deal since Nokia already included a free license to the software with the purchase of the phone, but it's still good news nonetheless.
Ovi Maps provides several advantages over its competitors. You can view maps even if you don't have a data connection. Maps are downloaded to device, so you can continue to use it even if you're offline. In addition, Nokia uses a hybrid vectorizing mapping technology that allows for quicker map redraws and the ability to zoom in/out with very little delay. Google Maps, on the other hand, requires that a new map be downloaded every time you want to zoom, thus taking up more bandwidth and time. Another plus: you can use Ovi Maps in 74 different countries and in 46 languages.
When you launch Ovi Maps, you'll find nine options: My Position, Find Places, Share Location, Favorites, Drive, Walk, Weather, Events, and Lonely Planet. All are pretty self-explanatory, and there are a number of shared features among the various apps, though it's not immediately clear. For example, My Position shows your location on a map, but you can also search for businesses (by name or category) and route to the location from there by tapping at the address at the top of your screen. You don't have to exit out of My Position and launch Find places or Drive to perform the same tasks.
Maps can be displayed in 2D, 3D, satellite, or terrain view, and there are also 3D landmarks, which can help provide a nice reference point, especially in unfamiliar places. You can also customize other settings, such as route preferences, points of interest (POI) categories, and frequency of traffic updates, from the Settings menu (press the wrench icon) on the front page of Ovi Maps.
Address entry requires a little patience since the various onscreen keyboards (even the full QWERTY) are a bit cramped. This is an area where we definitely missed the voice search function of Google Maps Navigation. To save some time, we'd recommend adding frequently visited places to your Favorites list as well as using the Ovi Web site to add favorites and routes. You will need to sign up for an Ovi account if you don't have one, but once established, you can sync data from the site back to your phone and vice versa. This also includes e-mail, appointments, photos, and more. We added a couple of our Favorite destinations and synced it back to the 5800 with no problem. However, we encountered a problem when trying to create routes. We got an error message saying that the Ovi Maps plug-in was not compatible with our browser (Firefox 3.6), even though the site says it supports Firefox 3 and higher, so we weren't able to upload any routes.
Route calculations on the phone are fast, however. We used the Nokia 5800 on a handful of trips around Manhattan and it took less than a minute for the phone to provide directions every time. Satellite acquisition took a little more time. The phone was usually able to find our position in about 2 minutes, but at times, it could take up to 5 minutes. Of course, there are number of variables that can affect the acquisition time, such as the weather and buildings, and you don't exactly get wide-open sky here in Manhattan.
Ovi Maps provided accurate directions for both in the car and on foot. You get text-to-speech directions, so you will hear specific street names when getting audible prompts. However, only certain voices offer text-to-speech so when choosing a voice, be sure to select one that has "with street names" noted next to it. The system was pretty decent with pronunciation and volume was loud and clear. If you're using the 5800 as a handheld navigator, it might be hard to hear the directions with all the street noise, but you can plug in a pair of headphones and listen to them that way.
Though routes were accurate, the phone had a bit of a problem with tracking our position. It was typically about a half block off from our actual location, which isn't unheard of, but at times, it could be up to a block off. Also, we missed several turns to test the route recalculation rate, and it took a while for the phone to realize we were off track. We can maybe understand this happening when you're driving since you have the combination of faster speeds and short city blocks, but it also happened while we were walking and we're no speed walkers, so you'd think it'd pick up on the missed turn faster.
We found the POI database to be mostly up-to-date, though the categorization of some businesses under certain areas was questionable. Ovi Maps also supports multistop trips, so if there's a POI you'd like to visit along the way, you can add it to your route. The extras--weather, events, and Lonely Planet--are definitely bonuses, helping you better plan your trip and find cool happenings and attractions along the way.
Performance
We tested the quad-band (GSM 850/900/1800/1900) Nokia 5800 Navigation Edition in New York using AT&T service and call quality was a bit mixed. On our end, we enjoyed clear conversations with minimal background noises and no voice distortion whatsoever. However, our callers complained of a disruptive hissing during lulls in the conversation and also said that the end of our sentences were cut off.
Speakerphone quality was satisfactory. Occasionally, we heard some light crackling in the background but otherwise found audio quality to be clear; at its highest setting, there's plenty of volume to hear conversations even in louder environments. We had no problems pairing the Nokia 5800 with the Logitech Mobile Traveller Bluetooth headset or the Motorola S9 Bluetooth Active Headphones.
The 5800 supports the 850/1,900MHz 3G bands, so you'll be able to get 3.5G HSDPA speeds through AT&T, but not T-Mobile since the carrier operates on the 1,700/2,100MHz bands. The HTML Web browser does a decent job and page load times were fast over a cellular data connection. CNET's full site loaded in 28 seconds, and CNN and ESPN's mobile sites came up in 8 seconds and 7 seconds, respectively. That said, we wish we could enter a URL simply by typing away instead of having to press a designated URL tab first and then Go to. Links within pages are difficult to press without zooming in on the page, which you can do by lightly double-tapping the screen.
Though it loses the XpressMusic branding, the Nokia 5800 Navigation Edition still has many of the same multimedia features. The music player offers all the basic features, such as shuffle, repeat, and on-the-fly playlists, and also includes a built-in equalizer and quick option to use a song as a ringtone. The sound quality was outstanding; we were most impressed at how balanced and rich tracks sounded through the speakers. The phone may be small, but it packs a lot of punch in terms of volume. Video playback was smooth with synchronized video and audio, but the picture was a bit fuzzy.
Fortunately, this wasn't true of the phone's 3.2-megapixel camera. Armed with Carl Zeiss optics, a dual LED flash, and autofocus, picture quality was sharp and vibrant. The flash could be a little too harsh at times, but it was more helpful than not.
The Nokia 5800 Navigation Edition features a 1,320mAh lithium ion battery with a rated talk time of 8.8 (GSM)/5 (3G) hours and up to 16.9 (GSM)/16.6 (3G) days of standby time. We are still conducting our battery drain tests but will update this section as soon as we have final results. According to FCC radiation tests, the 5800 has a digital SAR rating of 1.29 watts per kilogram.