New Touchscreen Nokia 5800 XpressMusic:

New Touchscreen Nokia 5800 XpressMusic:

Nokia has joined the iPhone clone parade with its 3G HSDPA 5800 XpressMusic phone, which features a 3.2-inch touchscreen and a microSD slot that can support up to 16 GB of add-your-own memory. It's due to be available worldwide sometime this fall, but there's no word yet on whether it will be unlocked or available through a carrier in the U.S. It's announced price is 270 Euros, which comes out to around $384.93 (at least today), so figure a $399 price tag.

Sound a little expensive for a phone with no built-in memory? That's because the 5800 is one of Nokia's Comes With Music phones. The price includes free access and downloads of music tracks from most of the major labels. Early word is these tracks are heavily copy-protected, which probably means no burning them to a CD, but details are still sketchy. Or, you can buy and download tunes the old-fashioned way, from the Nokia Music Store.

Otherwise, the 5800 also offers one big plus compared to other touchphones with full HTML browser: support for Flash-based Web content, currently unsupported by iPhone (although word is Adobe has an iPhone Flash solution that could be available before the 5800 hits these shores).

Nokia is touting the 5800's Media Bar, a drop down menu that provides direct access to the phone's music and entertainment bells and whistles, which include favorite tracks, videos and photos. Being an XpressMusic phone, the 5800 includes the usual music essentials, including a graphic equalizer, support for all the major digital music formats, stereo Bluetooth and a 3.5mm headphone jack. It also has built-in surround sound stereo speakers.

It's non-musical attributes include WiFi, A-GPS and a 3.2 MP digital camera featuring Carl Zeiss Tessar optics with a dual LED flash and video recording, famously absent on the iPhone. There's also a Contacts Bar, which lets you track a digital history of text messages, emails, phone logs, photos and blog updates of up to four friends.