Nokia 5800 Navigation Edition review (Unlocked)

Ovi Maps provides a number of navigation tools, including voice-guided directions and 3D maps.

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.

We were impressed with picture quality.

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.