They really don't get it.

Look at it.

It's never going to be an iPhone beater looking like that.

Yes it's pretty, but why do I need to see the nokia logo when I'm watching a movie or listening to music? The interface is also very cluttered.

They just don't get it.

Looks good! But what is the underlying OS? S60? Linux? Something else? And what about a development kit? Can I still create my own J2ME apps as I can for other Nokia phones? And if yes, does it offer an API to interact with the touch screen? And what about multi-touch and a tilt sensor? Any device that wants to be an iPhone killer needs to offer the same level of interaction AND be easy to program for.

I see it comes with a free pick (plectrum) on a string. How.. useful.

If it is running the most recent Symbian it is not getting anywhere near my household. That is the one where Nokia deliberately crippled VOIP to satisfy the operator B&D fetishes.

VOIP is not a bell-n-whistle. It is a requirement nowdays. People are working from home, having separate numbers for different members of the household, or even talking to the significant other who has climbed two floors up into the loft conversion to get work done.

I had to return a brand new N78 a couple of weeks back and tell O2 to stuff it down Nokia throat for this particular reason. Actually it was not just VOIP. The camera was horrid crap as well. Overall - almost as useless as an iPhone for non-music stuff. I ended up with the good old N95-1 as a result. It may be a brick, its interface may be anything but user friendly, but it has all the features you need and expect in a high end phone.

S60.

www.forum.nokia.com

Anyone can beat an iPhone in terms of list of features, number of megapizels, etc... but what is it like to use?

looks like a good upgrade to my N95.

I'm guessing the underlying OS is S60 with a swanky new skin on it.

want one!

Its a resistive touchscreen, so no multitouch unfortunately. I really dont understand why they cant put in a capacitive touchscreen to enable multitouch.

Capacitive touchscreens also mean that they can be covered by a protective glass, much like in the Iphone. Instead, we have to push hard and worry about the sensitive plasticky? screen.

Not especially impressive. It doesn't even outspec most of the other "iPhone Killers" on the market.

@Bruno Girin: see for example http://www.forum.nokia.com/devices/5800_XpressMusic

Probably get beaten to it but it runs S605th edition, Symbian 9.4

Nokia has not crippled VOIP in any phone. It's the operators. Stuff it to them.

The OS is Series 60 5th edition, which adds touch and sensor stuff to the existing platform.

The SDK is apparently available for download from Forum Nokia - lots more info at S60.com

Nokia finally get their finger out in the battle of the touch phones.... and this is all they can come up with?!

I just hope the quality is better than that steaming pile of phantom menace, the N95.

Is it really Nokia's fault if operators disable features? (and certainly has zero to do with Symbian).

Besides, you would have been better off buying a top-end phone sim free and save yourself the huge whack of money you'd be spending on the operator tariff to get it so called "free" and locked down tight. Sim-free, it would have all features fully enabled and you'll get updates quicker.

And if you want a decent camera, buy a camera, not a phone.

Wow - Nokia has finally caught up with screen resolutions from 2004.

But it's still S60 underneath, which means it smells like a pig, grunts like a pig, and limps like a donkey. It won't be coming anywhere near my house either.

Never trust a compny where the only "fans" are are astroturf bloggers:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/23/nokia_community_paid_for/

"Pretty much the only community around S60 is the community we pay to be there"

S60. FAIL.

don't know why the author has titled this "Nokia's IPhone beater" since it's not trying to be, this is a touch resistive, iPhone is multi-touch capacitive etc so in a way you can't really compare.. Anyway it does have video capture, MMS, Flash(which is comin to iPhone at some point anyway) cut & paste etc and with the price point is interesting.. Let's see

The user interface and web browser are two of the most revolutionary features of the iPhone. They make browsing possible.

Does the Nokia offer anything like this, for instance the two-fingered zooming feature or the one-fingered scrolling? If not, then web browsing is going to be painful and pointless.

But competition is good for everyone. Certainly it'll be good for Microsoft's tired Windows Mobile.

I've seen videos of the UI on other sites, it seems to be a traditional scrollbars, slow screen updates & indirect navigation mess. This phone really seems to be for the benefit of carriers who need to tick boxes in catalogues rather than end users.

I have an N82 and to be honest it's the best Nokia I've ever had!

The old N series phones had a tendency to crash, reboot etc but the newer ones tend to be really good and crash a lot less. N series with Skype + 5mp camera + WiFi + Mail4Exchange = a happy me! Especially as I don't want a large phone or a Blackberry!

Not convinced on touch screen phones though! You can't beat a keyboard for text/mail.

Calling anything an 'iPhone beater' just goes to show that Apple have won.

N78 comes crippled at factory default. So do a couple of other 3rd edition phones.

A couple of minutes worth of Internet searching would have told this to you.

It is in fact crippled by Nokia and it is deliberate (they are saying it is not a bug, it is a feature). To be most exact the "Internet telephony" module is missing and there are no associated prefs. You still have SIP prefs, but they do not hook up into anything.

I'll come back and read it when you've actually held one in your hand.

Will this fit into an iPod dock for charging on my swanky iPod music system in the kitchen and play my favourite tunes at the same time?

Can I dock it in my snazzy 'Halo' iPod dock alarm clock to charge overnight?

Will it dock with my, etc., etc.

I can see a global anti-trust action coming for use of the iPod dock connector for non-iPod devices. Either that, or this thing and anything else like it just won't get off the ground.

C'mon Google, use some of that Google gold to prise the dock connector into the public domain, maybe then you really can invent the Satan Phone.

It only takes 20 minutes, a copy of nemesis service suite, and running it through the nokia software updater to get back anything the network had removed, and also gets rid of all their crappy branding. The same thing should apply to this model. Even PH can do it...

Looks like an iPhone in the cheap plastic case.

Headphone jack on top... why!? I don't want the cable dangling over the screen while I try and pick music. Same as iPhone :( but not the touch :)

Finally switched from Nokia phones to an iPhone.

Yes the iPhone has it's limits and there are some frustrating deficiencies, but it has yet to restart when I try to answer a call or freeze when I activate the camera. Nokia used to make great phones with NOS, but their current smart phones are total rubbish.

"don't know why the author has titled this "Nokia's IPhone beater" since it's not trying to be, this is a touch resistive, iPhone is multi-touch capacitive etc so in a way you can't really compare.."

Also, the plastic is a slightly different shade of black to the iPhone so there is absolutely no basis for comparison with the iPhone. Completely different devices aimed at totally different markets.

Nokia aren't scrambling desperately to regain some market credibility after Apple shone a bright spotlight on their lack of innovation. No. You see, one has capacitive touchscreen and the other has resistive. Couldn't be more different.

"N78 comes crippled at factory default. So do a couple of other 3rd edition phones."

N78 has a new VoIP architecture and the product was launched simply without a built in client. It's fully VoIP capable, but just needs 3rd party VoIP apps and/or an update from Nokia to add a client based on the new architecture.

The same happened with the N80. Initially it was launched without the full integrated VoIP client, likely to get it onto the market quick. Later they relaunched it as the N80i, although they did release the same features as an update to the original N80.

Crippled? Well that depends if it was sold as a VoIP phone. If it's not one of the advertised features then it's not crippled. i.e. do your research and buy a VoIP capable phone in the future ;)*

* - though in my opinion, VoIP is not worth the effort anyway, especially if you expect to use it on public hotspots.

Anyway, as for the 5800, it's a different kettle of fish entirely. First S60 5th edition phone.

I can't help to but laugh at most of the comments above!

First of all, everyone is comparing this to the iPhone. It's never going to be an iPhone. If it was the same as the iPhone how pointless would it be?

The 5800 is priced at £215 sim-free, before subsidy. The iPhone is £350 on PAYG for the 8gb version (PAYG is subsidised..).

This is the (mid-range) first in a line of Nokia touchscreen phones; there will be more expensive ones in the future which will probably cost more, onboard storage, better camera, larger screen etc - but this phone is, in theory, selling to a different segment of the market than the iPhone.

I say in theory but we all knew that the first touch-screen phone from Nokia would be compared to the iPhone, regardless.

I would like an iPhone, I really would, but it just doesn't do stuff that I currently use my phone to do (Slingplayer, TomTom, Half-decent camera, Video Recording, AD2P). I'll probably be going for an N85 for my upgrade.

(I would never buy the 5800, being the first phone to use a new version of S60(v5). Give it a while for for some decent app support to arrive)

please, if you have a mind, give any new technology 3 years teething and weening time.

nothing new is perfect, and they use the consumers as the testers.

let the ducks feed on new products, wait like an eagle for the big kills.

my motto "it might be awesome, but i'm still waiting"

It reminds me of the £80 Hiphone iPhone clone you can buy from eBay. Looks like an iPhone, has a good features list but is nowhere near as good and misses the point. That's before we even think about the 30 or so essential iPhone apps.

Has anyone got VOIP to work on a Nokia anyway? My Nokia E51 comes with Nokia's preferred VOIP app Gizmo preinstalled. But it's unusable, with awful sound quality and terrible latency (delay). Skype is the same on the E51.

You got to love the way that nokia get their revenge in first, most people would have waited until the iPhone had actually beaten the N95.

Just got an N78, and I'm loving it, this could be a nice upgrade in a few months.

Regarding VOIP, haven't you people tried fring? It works amazingly for me, doing both voip and skype, msn, icq, gtalk, you name it. I'm using freecall.com for voip out and skypein, automatically picks the best connection available (wifi then 3g then edge)

Is it restricted in the uk or just not known?

Many years ago Nokia had the 7700 and 7710 touch devices on the now-defunct Series 90 platform. The touch was discarded when it merged with the Series 80 platform, which died a couple of years ago.

I never used them so I cannot comment on the usability, but at least they've done them before.

soon...

Errrr, no, not really, not even close. But then Nokia never intended it to be. Just wishful thinking by El Reg.

Move along, there's nothing to see here.

Didn't you realise all the Apple-connected goods you bought would lock you into buying

Apple forever?

That's definitely Nokia's fault isn't it. Definitely not yours. No.

Um... I was under the impression that Apple had hogged a patent precisely on multi-touchscreens, so I doubt you'll see any non-Apple devices with multi-touch.

@"No VoIP": So, you want to freeload calls on your mobile carrier? I admit my cellphone bills are high, but that doesn't mean I'd go out and rip 'em off with VoIP. Anyway, I'd be surprised on getting VoIP to work in a mobile connection without high latency!

This Nokia sounds interesting, but for me the "killer" feature is a physical QWERTY keyboard, which my Blackberry happily provides. I think I'll pass... but I will recommend this one over the iBone to potential iPhone victim^W buyers.

VoIP works perfectly well on Nokia phones, unlocked ones, anyway: I have both a Nokia E65 and an N95, and VoIP (using, for example, VoIPVoIP as a service provider) works flawlessly.

There's no substitute for actually knowing what the hell you're talking about.

Daniel, if no one else can make a multitouch device, how did Microsoft come out with "Surface"...?

Again, no substitute for actually knowing what you're talking about...