“The Nokia Flagship stores in Chicago and New York City today began selling the North American variant of the popular 5800 XpressMusic smartphone. The North American variant features quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900MHz) support, as well as dual-band UMTS (850/1900MHz) support for North American 3G networks such as AT&T and Rogers.The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is powered by Nokia’s S60 5th Edition platform, with a 3.2-inch nHD (640×360 pixels) resolution touchscreen display and 3.2 megapixel autofocus camera. The Nokia Flagship stores have the smartphone priced at US$399 before taxes.” via mobileburn.com
To Touch or not to Touch?
“Now, please don’t write me off as a ‘boring old fart’. OK, so I probably am one, but that shouldn’t discount my opinions – and I have used almost every phone and PDA from the last 15 years, so my thoughts should count for something. The subject under discussion here is Touch and my conclusion so far is ‘Unconvinced’….The first touch-based PDAs appeared in the mid 1990s, with Palm’s stylus-based PDAs, closely matched by Psion bringing in touch into their EPOC-powered palmtops and then Windows Mobile (nee Pocket PC) joining in the fun around the millennium. EPOC mainly evolved into Symbian OS, running the S60 and UIQ interfaces, with the former unashamedly button-driven and the latter unashamedly stylus-driven.Despite the relative success of Palm’s PDAs, I think it’s fair to say that the reliance on using a two-handed, stylus-driven interface meant that none of these touch-screen devices really became totally mainstream, in the sense that you’d see your mum or brother or colleague using one with no encouragement from you.And then the Apple iPhone came along. Its main innovation was that it dispensed with the conventional wisdom that touch meant a stylus and allowed the use of a grubby, greasy, uneducated finger instead as its main driving force. You still had to use two hands (most of the time) but at least one barrier to use was removed for the main in the street.” Read more here: