Camera Phones Plaza

Nokia XpressMusic 5800, code-named “The Tube”, has been widely talked about since the day it was showcased in a PowerPoint presentation at the Evans Data Developer Relations Conference in Redwood City earlier this spring and was said to be the most dreaded rival of Apple’s iPhone.

Nokia spokesman Kasey Farrar refused at that moment to discuss Tube, but confirmed the fact that a device will be released in the second half of the year and will be the first phone with a touch-based interface on the most recent Symbian operating system, called S60. Referring to the competition between iPhone and Nokia (and, why not, other device makers), Farrar said that “the iPhone has not been a headache at all for us and it actually validates our current strategy with converged devices in our N and E series”.

The reason of the excitement this phone made is the fact that we’re facing the first Symbian S60 and first Nokia handset that uses a full touchscreen. The new Nokia 5800 XpressMusic will feature a 3.2-inch touchsreen display with a 640 x 360 resolution, a 3.2 megapixel autofocus camera with dual LED flash and 30 FPS VGA recording and a built-in A-GPS and Wi-Fi. In addition, the device is equipped with the Symbian S60 Taco, the OS of the new phone, USB 2.0 and Bluetooth 2.0, a 3.5 mm headphone jack and a TV-out port.

As far as the storage space is concerned, the Nokia Tube provides 150 MB of user memory and a microSDHC memory card slot which allows 8 or 16 GB (an 8 GB memory card is included in the box). The device will measure 111 x 52 x 15.5 mm and weighs 109 gr.



The Tube was reported to be launched on October 2nd, that is… today. Nokia Remix London will be the event that celebrates the release of this new handset, the XpressMusic 5800. It has been a long labour, especially because the Tube is thought to be seen in the recent Batman movie, “The Dark Knight”, when Lucius Fox (played by Morgan Freeman) revealed this slick-looking Nokia cell phone that was able to send sonar waves in 3D. The only thing Nokia said at that time was that in fact the blockbuster prominently features a Nokia device which is not a commercial product. Yet.

Anyway, there’s a Nokia virtual launch waiting for us today, October 2, 2008, at 17:30 UK (16:30 GMT) and we’re all invited to hear big news that looks set to mash up the world of mobile music. Still, no word about the Tube. A whole lot of mystery, isn’t it?

(Source concept-phones.com)