Well I know I have been pretty quiet recently I have been training for the Rob Roy Challenge (http://www.robroychallenge.com). Any way, last week I renewed my contract with Virgin Mobile and got a Nokia XM 5800. Up until now I have been using my iPod touch for music and syncing with exchange and imap email, my Nokia 6300 for making calls and sending txts, and my Samsung Digimax i6 pmp digital camera for taking photo’s.
Well it could be that this is all about to change. Nokia designed this Touch screen smart phone as their answer to the iPhone.
The Nokia 5800 XM comes with mail for exchange as well as its own email client. which I thought was great as my touch would sync up with my exchange server in the office and my google mail via imap.
However it turns out that you can use the mail for exchange to sync your google calendar and contacts… so I pondered for a while and decided to go for that rather than sync up with my exchange, after all that is my work email, why would I want that email when I am not in the office, if they want me to access it then they can give me a phone!
Any way first things first, I managed to sync my Nokia 6300 contacts up to Google using the connectivity profiles. I then set up my XM 5800 to sync with Google and all my contacts and calendar appointments were downloaded
As that was the basics sorted out I then decided to play about with the GPS that was built in with the phone and again I was really amazed at what it could do. I downloaded Google Maps on to my phone and then using Google Latitude I could see on the internet where I was (and so could my friends on Google).
I then proceeded to download the Nokia Sports Tracker, this utilises the GPS whilst you are doing sport, ie walking, running or cycling. As I cycle to and from work I use this twice a day. Once I have finished my work out I then upload it on to the Nokia Sports Tracker site and it maps out my route and shows my distance, speeds, altitudes and if I had a blue tooth heart rate monitor my heart beat too.
Any way I have still got some play to do, but here is a list of all the applications that I now have installed on my 5800 XM:
- Mail for Exchange
- Google Maps
- Nokia Sports Tracker
- Mobbler – last.fm player
- Facebook app
- Paint PAd
- Gravity (for twitter)
- AccuWeather
I have to say there are a few things that I don’t like about it. I guess after using my iPod touch for the last year I have really got to like the OS that is used on it.
The 5800 XM Email does not support HTML which is a real downer.
The music side of things on the phone is good, but not as user friendly as the iPod touch again. browsing albums isn’t as nice and the feel just isn’t as smooth as the touch.
However the camera is a 3.2 megapixel camera with a flash wish takes some pretty good quality pictures. the Digital camera I have just now is ok, but its not all that great and I think that my new phone will be a good substitute when I am out and about and I do not have my camera on me.
If I had to give the phone a mark out of 10 I think that it would have to be about a 7.
Any watch this space for more posts about my phone. :)