I’m big fan of Sony Ericsson phones. Among 19 phones (as far as I remember) I’ve used during last 3 years, there are 3 Motorolas, 2 Samsungs, 1 HTC and all others are Sony Ericssons. This can show my love for Sony Ericsson phones. I simply love their UI, simplicity and I feel that the price tag they keep for their phones is more reasonable than the other manufacturers.

The longest running phone in my hands was a HTC Vox. Its a windows mobile and the reason I used it for longer time is a weird one. I simply couldn’t sell the phone. There is no market for used WinMo and HTC Phones. As a matter of fact, the phone I’ve used a lot is Nokia 8250 when I was doing my Engineering  (story older than 3 years) That was a phone, one of my cousins gave me.

So, Nokia 5800 is officially the first Nokia I bought. There are few great reviews for the phone, but they are completely unbiased reviews. They point out good and bad. But, this one is a completely biased review (from a SE fan). Here it goes.

Package and Pricing – kickass.

For 20K, you get touch screen phone with WiFi, 3G, GPS with 8 Gig card, 3.2 Megs cam, phone cover, plectrum and an additional stylus. This is one thing that made me buy this phone. If it was a single grand more than that, I wouldn’t have bought this phone.

Phone – Duh.

Well, to be honest, I thought phone is a great release from Nokia till I got to know that  Nokia forgot that people use the phone for calling. My phone was a defective piece where volume of Ear piece was jumping up and down. A small Google search resulted in a lot more customer bakras who are facing same problem and a YouTube video of how to fix the problem. I had to follow that and fix it myself (Yeah, I could’ve gone to Nokia care and got it fixed there too) But, the point is – too many people having problem ain’t good. But, after fixing that problem, phone is fine.

Phone UI – Double Duh.

I did like Nokia’s Active standby in few phones my friends use. I expected something like that, but this phone’s Active standby was the worst Nokia can do. It had two types of Active standby themes, one is Contact bar, another is Shortcut bar. Both can accommodate ‘just’ four items. It means, you’ll either have 4 friends whom you want to talk, follow, stalk or you like only 4 applications on your phone. Contacts bar – Not seriously my choice. I cant limit my friends to 4. Shortcuts bar – Come on, just four applications ?

And, there are two buttons on down on the screen. One is for dialer, another one for Contacts list. If you want to go to menu, the only option you’ve is to press hardware button. I’m not kidding, but Nokia must be kidding me. All the empty real estate between the bar and two buttons down the screen, accommodate a search bar and music info (if playing) if you’ve selected Shortcut bar as active standby theme. And, the search bar searches only on Yahoo, Google or Live. It doesn’t search phone contents like other Nokia phones do. Another let down.

Phone has an accelerometer which turns the screen to landscape automatically whenever you turn the phone. It becomes annoying as normal people normally don’t keep phone in perfect position all the time. So, I disabled automatic rotation. But, there is a catch there, no manual rotation. Now, I cant use my phone in landscape mode at all, unless the software is made such a way that it works only in landscape. The options are … either be annoyed by automatic rotation or forget rotation. Its really annoying while browsing internet on phone.

Phone Camera – Triple Duh.

Its 3.2 megs cam by title but works like a 2.0 megs cam. In fact, my HTC Vox did have 2 Megs cam that I never used, worked almost as good/bad as this cam.

Music and Video – Express Music and kickass quality

Audio quality is awesome. Headphones are comfortable. Quality of speakers on phone is damn good. Phone comes with some songs inbuilt, but most of them are DRM protected. So, if you are thinking about keeping them (unlike me), make sure that you save the licenses. Video quality is awesome (atleast the videos given). If you’re fine with a small wide screen, you can watch stuff on it.

So, what’s the point.

If you’re not picky like me, you can live with this phone happily ever after. But, If you’re like me, you might end up taking some serious decisions like, running back to SE phones ASAP.