Gizmodo tests Nokia 5800: Don’t lose that stylus; single-touch screen far less accurate than iPhone

“The 5800 XpressMusic (aka Tube) is the first touchscreen Symbian S60 phone from Nokia—a surprising fact considering how prominent touchscreens have quickly become over the last few years,” John Mahoney reports for Gizmodo. “And instead of rolling out the new touch-specific S60 Fifth Edition on a flagship N-series phone, Nokia has decided to position the 5800 as a music phone for the kiddies, packaging it with their all-you-can-eat (and keep) Comes With Music service. This choice is probably a brilliant one, because after our quick demo, this thing needs a bit more time in the oven before it can stand with the big guys for a touchscreen-only device.”

“While the touchscreen is sharp and bright, it’s resistive rather than capacitive, which means instead of accurately picking up the light zap of electricity from your fingertips, it registers where two thin layers of the screen get pushed together under your finger,” Mahoney reports. “On the prototype we played with briefly, it’s much harder to get touches to register, and far less accurate than the iPhone’s capacitive screens.”

“The 5800 packs a built-in stylus for this reason—you’ll be using it a lot,” Mahoney reports. “Don’t plan on using this thing for heavy emailing or texting—you’ll probably be using T9 text entry with the touch dialpad or the stylus for most of your text entry unless you have the patience of a monk, which kind of defeats the point for an all-touch device these days.”

Full article, with video of hands-on demonstration, here.