Sensei

12 October

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Nokia 5800 ExpressMusic

Posted by Dawn Baird, Partner in business,technology

My new Nokia arrived. Not the one I wanted, but the only one I could get free on my O2 business contract… It was plastic, it looked cheap and nasty. I’ll persevere, I thought, unconvinced. So, we went through the usual nightmare transferral of content, which worked partially.

There are three methods of inputting text with the Nokia 5800 ExpressMusic. There is the plectrum, the stylus or the fingernail.

The plectrum looked fiddly, and it was. However, I kept an open mind. I attached the little plectrum thingy with a cord to the top right of the phone, which is used to tap out characters when texting and wondered why I’d not just bit the bullet and ordered an iPhone. The dangly plectrum made it awkward to put inside my fluffy case, it was awkward to remove, it was awkward to use (I had to double or triple-tap to get anything to appear on the screen). After years of working at a keyboard, my wrists are banjaxed and need to be treated with care. So, stabbing a plastic screen with a plastic thing is not on my list of favourite things. I removed it after a few hours.

I also tried using the stylus, which was inserted in the bottom of the phone. I could just imagine me standing at the bus-stop opposite Boots, laden with shopping bags, with only one free hand and trying to organise dinner. No. Finally, I tried using my fingertips, or rather fingernails! Nope. It worked, but again, there was far too much hit and miss. Sometimes the keys I tapped registered on the screen, sometimes they didn’t. Since the keys were so small, sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn’t. As someone who’s been knows to use up all her allocated texts in a month, I knew it was a relationship destined for disaster.

The phone was wiped, put back in the box with all its cheap accessories and returned to O2. When I find my dream phone, I’ll let you know…

Is this a business phone? No, for the following reasons:

The screen is too small for surfing or dealing with emails.
The keys are too small for quick input.
The phone feels altogether too light and cheap to take any abuse in and out of bags and travelling around with all your other devices.

Image credit: israelavila.