Nokia's first touchscreen mobile phone, the 5800 XpressMusic (or 'Tube' as it's codenamed) has a UK release date, the company announced today.

It'll go on sale from Nokia's Regent Street and Heathrow stores and its online shop on January 23rd, before rolling out to other retailers on January 30th, including Vodafone, O2, Orange, T-Mobile UK, Virgin Mobile, Carphone Warehouse and Phones 4U.

The device will cost £249 SIM-free - an aggressive pricing strategy on Nokia's part, given the powerful features. However, its focus is likely to be more on music than gaming.

Indeed, EA Mobile's Chris Gibbs publicly criticised the device at last year's Nokia Games Summit: "Think about the Tube, really large screen but no hardware acceleration, so it's not the most game-friendly device in the world."

It's also unclear whether the 5800 will be an N-Gage handset or not. It wasn't one of the features listed at the device's launch last year, but at that London event, Pocket Gamer was told that N-Gage was "in the pipeline" for the handset.