You Got the Touch - Nokia 5800 and Nokia N97

Anyone who likes touchscreen phones should be excited; the biggest name in the game has announced not one, but TWO mobile phones: the svelte Nokia 5800 and the unbelievably mind-blowing Nokia N97.

Off to a bad start – Nokia's early attempts at a touchscreen phone

Many people are under the incorrect impression that the Nokia 5800 is the first touchscreen phone to wear the Nokia label. It isn't. Quite the opposite, in fact, there have been several touch-based phones to wear the Nokia brand. Starting at the 7700, the world has seen a few Nokia mobile phones that are controlled by you prodding and poking the screen. They all had reasonably big (for their time) screens, but but unfortunately, they shared something else: they were irredeemably awful. Only one of those mobile phones, the 6708, showed a modicum potential, but that was made solely to be sold in China, and thus, it wasn't meant for us in these sceptred isles. The mobile phones WE got were, and I use this phrase with much feeling, total, and complete toss.

However, those unpleasant recollections have all been removed by the debut of a pair of new Nokia mobile phones, both of which have touch-sensitive displays, and both of which are so much more alluring...

Nokia 5800 - if music be the food of love...

First on the roster is a brand new entrant into Nokia's Xpress line of music mobile phones, the mouth-watering Nokia 5800. This phone is quite obviously designed for music and video; you can tell by the dedicated XpressMedia button that opens a list of shortcuts to music, videos, the web, and so on. Oh, and the Nokia 5800 has a 3.2 inch touchscreen, to let you muck about with those different media files. Essentially, the Nokia 5800 was designed to be a little handheld jukebox and movie player, and as music handsets go, this is just about the prettiest. The Nokia 5800 has also got a 3 megapixel camera, HSDPA data access and sat-nav, making it a wonderful all-rounder, as well as a superb media player. Oh, and it's got a strap to fasten on an imitation guitar plectrum. That's pretty cool, that.

However, the Nokia 5800 is very definitely a mid-range handset; it's not, nor will it ever be, a full-fat top-ender. That position falls to another handset...

Nokia N97 - the single best phone EVER made?

With the Nokia 5800 all set to deliver touch-based mobile phones to the mid-range market, that opens up a massive gap at the very top-endof the product range; well, there IS a touchscreen mobile phone on its way to fill that gap: the utterly awesome Nokia N97. This takes the same Symbian S60 Touch operating system and packages it inside the body of a proper, full-on smartphone. So it has a massive, 3.5 inch screen, a kick out QWERTY keyboard, and the camera's been upgraded to 5 megapixels. The Nokia N97 is, as should be glaringly obvious, destined to be the new flagship Nseries mobile phone, and it really is as powerful as the rumours had us believe, with HSDPA, sat-nav, digital compass, and integrated Flash, meaning you have an internet experience that tops any other mobile phones! Put simply the Nokia N97 is simple incredible. It easily outdoes other mobile phones and while the Nokia 5800 aims to take over the mid-range, I'm predicting that the Nokia N97 will completely DESTROY the competition next year!