Nokia 5800 full review -3

Connectivity, Battery, Memory

The 5800-1 is quad-band GSM and dual band WCDMA (900/2100MHz) with HSDPA. There will be a number of regional variants (5800-2 and 5800-3) with different WCDMA bands (850/1900) as well as a version for China without any WCDMA radio. All variants also have WiFi (802.11b/g), Bluetooth and USB for local connectivity. TV-out support is provided through the in-box cable which plugs into the 3.5mm audio port.

In software, the 5800 uses the same 'Destinations' (grouped access points) as were first seen in S60 3.2 devices. This means the phone will automatically use the most appropriate access point (e.g. WiFi hotspots, once set up, can be used in preference to the standard cellular access point). Destinations are fully implemented in S60 5th Edition; more of the in-built applications take advantage of destinations and as a result the annoying 'choose access points' dialogs are much less common. It's still not perfect, for example, it can not hand over between access points, but it does address one of the main bug bears of S60 users.

The device ships with a 1320 mAh battery and has a quoted talk time of 9 hours (WCDMA). In use, I found the device would comfortably last 2 days with typical usage, and even with heavy usage it should have no problem getting through a day. Web browsing, video playback, GPS navigation and other activities that involve leave the screen switched on and constant processor activity obviously drain the battery more quickly, but even with constant, non-stop use you should get between 3 and 5 hours, depending on what you're doing. For activities that leave the screen off, the figures are even more impressive, the 5800 is quoted as managing 35 hours of music playback and my tests would certainly support a figure fairly close to that. It is a testament to the skill of Nokia's hardware engineers and the power management capabilities of Symbian OS 9.4 that such figures are possible.

Forum Nokia specifications reveal that the 5800 has an ARM 11 processor running at 369 MHz (presumably the Freescale model as used in other recent S60 devices). The processor speed is, as ever, fairly meaningless; the overall performance of the device is very good. The 5800 has around 80 MB of internal memory available to the end user, enough for a decent number of applications and important user data. There's an 8GB microSD card in the box, adding to the feeling of value for money, which gives a generous amount of room for maps, music, applications, videos and photos. In some markets, there will be music and videos preloaded on to the card and you can also expect to find Maps for your local country preloaded. The phone worked fine with a 16 GB card and should also be compatible with the forthcoming 32 GB cards. There's 128 MB of RAM on board, of which around 72 MB is free after switching on the device, which should be more than sufficient for even strenuous multi taskers.