Following Samsung's lead, Nokia seems to be preparing to flood the market with touchscreens covering all the popular segments. We have the music and business phones already in the 5800 XpressMusic and the N97, and yesterday we reported on the 5800 Navigation Edition. Today, Nokia announced the cheapie.
Though cheapie might not be the most accurate way of describing this new touchscreen handset. After all, it will come packing the same connectivity hardware as both versions of the 5800; HSDPA, A-GPS, Bluetooth, a 3.2-inch 16 million colour display, plus it comes with the full suite of Nokia Ovi apps too, including Nokia Maps.
To cut a few corners and keep the price down, Nokia does plan to leave out a few key features, however. The camera will be a low-res 2-megapixel shooter, the lowest resolution camera we see in Nokia phones these days, and it doesn't look like this camera will have a photo light to assist it when shooting in dark places. Also, the 5230 will ship sans Wi-Fi, so people who love piggybacking on the Wi-Fi network at the office to watch YouTube might have to look elsewhere.
Our greatest disappointment is that Nokia's awesome Comes With Music offer won't be available with the 5230 in Australia, though it will be for customers in other markets throughout Asia and Europe. Comes With Music was one of the reasons we gave the 5800 XpressMusic an Editors' Choice award, after all, who doesn't love free music? If we don't get the music subscription then we hope that Nokia manages to keep the price for the 5230 extremely low when it is released in Australia in the fourth quarter of 2009.
Add Your Review 39