Anyone who likes touchscreen phones should be excited; the most recognised name in the game has waded in with not one, but TWO mobile phones: the sexy Nokia 5800 and the totally awesome Nokia N97.

The history of touchscreen phones – best left in the past…

Many people are under the incorrect assumption that the Nokia 5800 is the first touchscreen mobile phone Nokia have ever made. It’s not. The opposite’s true, because there’s been several touch-based phones to wear the Nokia badge. Starting at the 7700, the world has seen a few Nokia mobile phones which work by you prodding and poking the screen. They had a relatively big (for the time) touchscreen in common, but the other feature they had in common, unfortunately, was that they were utterly hideous. Just one of those handsets, the 6708, displayed a modicum promise, but it was destined exclusively to be sold in China, and thus, it never saw the light of day in Britain. Unfortunately, that meant that the phones we got were utter, and complete bobbins.

However, these bad mental images have all been removed due to the announcement of a pair of new Nokia mobile phones, both of which come with touch-sensitive displays, and both of which are much, much sexier…

Nokia 5800 – music, rhythm, who oculd ask for anything more…

The first phone up is a completely new entrant into Nokia’s Xpress line of music mobile phones, the mouth-watering Nokia 5800. This one’s pretty obviously built for music and video; you can tell by the separate XpressMedia touch-key that pops up a list of shortcuts to music, videos, the web, and more. Then, of course, the Nokia 5800 has a 3.2 inch touchscreen, to actually muck about with those different media files. Basically, the Nokia 5800 was designed to be a teeny handheld entertainment centre, and as music devices go, this is just about the sexiest. The Nokia 5800 also comes with a 3 megapixel camera, HSDPA internet access and sat-nav, so that it’s a wonderful all-round mobile phone, in addition to being a brilliant media box. Oh, and it’s got a strap to clip on an imitation guitar plectrum. Pointless, but brilliant.

Despite all those features, the Nokia 5800 is very definitely a mid-range device; it isn’t, nor will it ever be, a full-fat top-end monster. That role falls to a different mobile…

Nokia N97 – the Superman of mobile phones?

With the Nokia 5800 all set to bring touch-based mobile phones to the mid-range market, that leaves a great big gap at the absolute top-endof the product range; well, there IS a touch-based mobile phone on its way to take its place as the top-end powerhouse: the utterly mind-blowing Nokia N97. This takes the same Symbian S60 Touch interface and crams it within the body of a proper, full-on smartphone. So it has a massive, 3.5 inch screen, a kick out QWERTY keypad, and the camera’s been upgraded to 5 megapixels. The Nokia N97 is, in a very definite way, destined to be the new flagship Nseries mobile phone, and it’s genuinely as powerful as the rumours had us believe, with HSDPA, sat-nav, digital compass, and built-in Flash, so that you have an internet experience that tops any other mobile phones! Put simply the Nokia N97 is awesome. It gleefully relieves itself over other mobile phones and while the Nokia 5800 angles firmly for the mid-range, I’m predicting that the Nokia N97 will utterly DOMINATE the world next year!

Expert on mobile phones, having worked in the industry for over 7 years.