Ok, I know I am pretty late in posting this as, most of you must have read a lot about the first XpressMusic touch screen phone, the Nokia 5800 that was launched a long time back. I recently got the device to play around with and would like to share my experiences with this device. I had earlier covered a lot of user reviews, which were sent across to me by some of the NAMP readers, who also own the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. You can check out the reviews here and here.
When you hold the Nokia 5800 for the first time you will feel two things, the phone is small in size than it looks in commercials as well as on the box and it is really very light. Many touch screen phones, which I have used or came across are generally a bit on the heavier side. But the Nokia 5800 is pretty light as compared to its brothers from other mothers. The screen of the phone is pretty big and makes viewing and browsing a bliss. The controls of the phone are pretty handy. 
The top is cramped up with the power button, microUSB slot and a standard 3.5mm headphone jack. I guess, giving the microUSB port on the bottom of the phone would have been nice. The other controls of the phone like the volume controller, screen locking button, camera button are pretty handy and can be used even if you use the phone with single hand.
When you activate the screen using the screen lock/unlock slider button, you are presented with a high resolution screen with your normal operator logo, clock, shortcut menus. At the bottom of the screen you will see two icons, which are really easy to guess if you are using the phone for the first time. The one on your left side is the number pad and the other icon is the phone book icon.
The front of the phone has three small keys, Green White and Red. No points for guessing what the red and green keys stand for. But yeah, being a S60 smart phone, you will look out for the traditional menu key that is present on all the S60 phones. Here, the white key is your menu key. Once you click that you will be presented with the main menu of the phone. The touch screen can be operated using your fingers as well as the stylus that is provided at the back of the phone. But I would recommend you to use your fingers to do the browsing as you will love the way the phone vibrates when you touch the screen or try to get into any menu. The stylus can be used to do more tedious tasks like scrolling cause if you have big fingers you will find scrolling difficult. The scrolling on the Nokia 5800 does not happen like that in the iPhone. You cannot flip through the contents except you are browsing the photographs.
At the back, there is a 3.2 mega pixel snapper with Carl Zeiss lens. The camera quality is ok in bright light but it does not do that well in low light conditions. The camera comes equipped with a dual LED flash, which is really bright. You can also customize your pics to an extent using the in-built photo editor. There are stereo speakers at the lower back and the output is loud and clear. Overall the device looks nice and the UI is good not as great as the iPhone UI, which most of you must have come across. Some changes are necessary. Also, sometimes the UI hangs, which can be a turn off. I must say that, Nokia has not failed with the launch of its first S60 5th Edition touch screen device. I will tell you guys more about the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic in detail in my upcoming review posts.
With Nokia 5320, XpressMusic is back to Symbian. Nokia XpressMusic range targets the youth with two key features, games and music. Nokia 5320 is a XpressMusic phone with dedicated music keys and N-Gage platform support. The phone is Symbian 9.3 OS, S60 phone with Feature Pack 2. The fact that makes this phone a true music dedicated phone is that it has a 3.5 mm head phone jack. The phone has a nice 2 mega pixel snapper with 2'' QVGA display having 16 million colors. With 140 MB internal memory and microSD card support for 512MB, 1GB and 8GB cards makes this phone a true music companion.
Nokia 5320 Package includes:
- Nokia 5320 XpressMusic Phone
- Pair of Stereo Headsets
- Phone Charger
- Nokia PC Suite CD
- USB Cable
- microSD Card
- User Manual
- Fast Interface
- Dedicated Music Keys on the side and on the front panel
- 140MB Internal memory and external memory card support up to 8GB
- 128MB RAM with ARM CPU (may be that is the reason the interface is fast)
- Bluetooth with USB 2.0
- 3G connectivity with HSDPA support
- FM Radio with RDS
- Headset sound quality really good
- Slim and compact body with a feel good factor
- 3.5 mm standard headphone jack for all audiophiles
- Nice and crisp loudspeaker sound for music listening experience
Design and Build:
Nokia 5320 is a slim and good looking phone. The phone feels good in hands but has somewhat plasticky build. Let me warn you that the phones surface is a finger print magnet and you will have to keep it really clean. The design and the color combinations of the phone will easily tell you that it targets the youth market.
The phone has a really nice grip and the key pad design is also very innovative. There is a D Pad for 4 way navigation and also a dedicated Symbian menu key.
The right side of the phone has a camera key and a volume control key. On the left side you will find dedicated music keys and microSD card slot. The front panel of the phone has a 2'' display with a small camera on the top left for video calling and on the top right hand side you will find a My Own button and for me it opens the music player when clicked. Though the key is helpful, its position makes it vulnerable to accidental clicks. Having this button on the right hand side would have been helpful, but its ok, its not that bad.
The back panel of the phone as dots on the top and bottom that provide a good grip. Apart from that you get a 2 mega pixel camera with dual LED flash. Like most of the Nokia phones, the camera lens does not have any protection and this makes it vulnerable to scratches and dust particles, which might affect the image quality over long period of time.
At the top you will find the power key, that can be used to switch the phone on and off. It can also be used to switch between profiles, which you get in all Nokia phones. At the bottom you will find slot to connect microUSB, 3.5 mm standard headphone jack and charging slot.
The overall build quality of the phone is good and the phone feels nice when you take it in hand. The grips do their work properly. The curved ergonomics give it a stylish look but then the phone sometimes feels plasticky but that's ok. The design of the phone is trendy and the right color combination makes it attractive for the younger generation.
Display and User Interface:
The overall build quality of the phone is good and the phone feels nice when you take it in hand. The grips do their work properly. The curved ergonomics give it a stylish look but then the phone sometimes feels plasticky but that's ok. The design of the phone is trendy and the right color combination makes it attractive for the younger generation.
Display and User Interface:
Like all Symbian S60 phones, the 2'' QVGA screen of the Nokia 5320 has nice and crisp resolution. The back lighting of the phone is bright and the phone is very easy to operate in the dark. The phone's interface is pretty responsive. The phone offers different ways in which you can arrange your standby icons. The standby icons can be disabled and the shortcuts can be assigned to the D-Pad. The standby icons can be arranged horizontally and vertically and the shortcuts that you get are, music player, search application, the web browser and Nokia 5320 Gallery. The My Own key lets you assign any function to it.
Due to the available 128MB of RAM and Symbian OS the phone's User Interface and graphical output is crisp and the phone seldom hangs. Yeah the icons are somewhat small and some people might find them not that good. The screen saver in the standby mode is really cool, thanks to the RAM and crisp interface. Also, it does not matter, how many applications have you opened, you can easily browse between applications by click of a button. The phone's voice recognition works well like all other Symbian phones.
Nokia 5320 has a good, crisp and easy user interface and for a music phone that targets the younger generation, the combination is perfect. Nokia 5320's interface can be easily customized in different ways to suit your needs. You can either have the icons displayed into a 4 X 3 grid or like a simple list. The phone also gives you an option of displaying the icons into a 3D V Shape and Horseshoe Views. Going further in customization, the phone has pre-installed themes and you can download more themes to customize your phone.
Call Quality:
Nokia 5320's call quality was excellent. There was no problem is making and taking calls. As I told you before, the speaker quality is pretty loud and clear. The in-built vibrator is pretty strong and you will not miss any call. But if your trousers are loose and your phone is on vibrator, you might end up having a list of miss calls on your screen. The call quality of this phone is far better than the previous XpressMusic phones.
Multimedia Features:
With 140MB of internal memory and 8GB memory support, the Nokia 5320 is a multimedia delight. As it belongs to the XpressMusic range, you will find that it does do justice to its name. Best part of this music phone is that it comes with a standard 3.5 mm headphone jack and a pair of Nokia headphones. The company supplied headphones are ok not that great but as it has a standard 3.5 mm jack you can plug in your Sennheiser or Bose and enjoy the music ride. You can create M3U Playlists and add files easily to the playlists you have created. The phone supports MP3, AAC, eAAC+ and WMA audio formats. One good thing is that your files are automatically sorted based on Artists, Genre, Album and Composer. The USB interface makes it easy for you to transfer the songs and the in-built speakers of the Nokia 5320 throw out some real good sound and you can often use it to listen to songs without headphones. Being an A2DP Bluetooth supported phone, you can use Nokia 5320 with your Bluetooth headset and enjoy the music. Pairing the phones with other Bluetooth enabled headsets was never a problem. One thing I have observed in Nokia phones is that, Bluetooth pairing is always very smooth. Overall the multimedia features of the phone, especially music, are really good and handy. It wont replace your iPod but it wont make you feel sad when your iPod is not around.
Search Feature:
On the stand-by homescreen you will see an shortcut to search the Internet as well as the phone. This Search option helps you in searching the web. You can choose between Google, Yahoo! and Live Search. Apart from searching the Internet, you can also search the phone contents using Nokia Search. The option lets you search through all the content including, Music, Contacts, Calender, Messages, E-Mail messages, Bookmarks, Images, Videos, Landmarks, Applications and Notes. With more than 8GB memory on-board, this option is pretty handy and I personally liked it. Being on the homescreen makes it easy to access and you don't need to open each and every menu to find what you are looking for.
Internet Experience:
The Internet browsing experience on the Nokia 5320 was good. The pages load fast and the resolution is crisp and clear but the small screen size can be a turn off for some people. Also, you can shrink the text, zoom in and zoom out to improve your browsing experience. The phone is not that great if you are looking for something to browse the Internet but its does a decent job.
Imaging, Radio and Video:
Nokia 5320 has a 2 mega pixel snapper and let me tell you the picture quality of this phone was much better than many other Nokia phones that I have seen with 2 mega pixel camera. The output of the camera is good. The camera has auto focus and dual LED flash but you don't have any lens cover for the camera's lens and the lens is prone to dust, finger prints and scratches. Nokia 5320 camera samples are below,
Using the radio was a cakewalk and there was no problem while tuning into popular stations. Like most of the Nokia phones, the FM radio on Nokia 5320 has a simple interface, I really liked it and one feature that appealed to me was automatic scanning of available stations in your vicinity. This is really helpful in finding out stations in your nearby area. For video playback, you have Real Player in the Nokia 5320. The player can be adjusted to play videos in both, portrait and landscape mode. The video player lets you play videos in full screen mode with the soft key buttons hidden. The camera can take Videos at 15fps in VGA mode and saves the video in MP4 format. Check out the sample photos taken from the Nokia 5320. Over all the phone is good when it comes to imaging, video recording & viewing and radio functions. Though the video output is crisp and clear, you might not like it viewing it on the small screen of Nokia 5320.
XpressMusic Player:
Nokia 5320 being a XpressMusic phone, I wanted to have dedicated section on its review. The features that make Nokia 5320 a XpressMusic phone are, 3.5 mm standard headphone jack and dedicated music keys to control your music player. The 3.5 mm headphone jack is really cool for your favorite pair of headphones. The active stand-by layout of the phone make the music player just one click away from you. The output of the player is good but now exceptional, do not expect some miracle from it but it is a good music companion. The phone supports various formats like MP3, AAC, eAAC and WMA. Like most of the music phone from Nokia, the player can be made to run in the background and the homescreen will show the current track played by the phone. You can sort your favorite music by Artists, Albums, Genre and Composer. Your songs will be automatically added to the music library as the player scans your phone for media.
Nokia 5320's built-in voice recognition software gives you a functionality called, "Say and Play", when activated, you just need to say the name of the song or the artist and it will play that particular song for you. I tried using it but it was not that accurate and most of the time it failed. May be there was problem with the sample handset. If the My Own key on the top right of the phone is calibrated to open the music player and if you press that key for a long time then, the Say and Play function gets activated and can be used. Being a handset with A2DP support, you can enjoy your music on stereo Bluetooth headset. The handset shouts that it is a XpressMusic phone with its music dedicated keys and functions. The sound output on the headset was good and on loudspeaker was really awesome.
Office Menu:
Some of the interesting applications that you will find under Office menu are, Calender, Quickoffice, Adobe PDF Reader Light Edition and the Zip Manager. The Calender is the same as you might have seen in other Symbian devices of Nokia, the Zip Manager is a very handy application and helps you open compressed zip files. The Quick office application is helpful in opening Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. The application can only handle files if they are done in Office 2003. You cannot edit documents in this phone but yeah you can get the whole package from Nokia's download center and yeah who needs to do office work on a music phone man. The in-built calendar has monthly, weekly and daily views. The other functions are Notes, Converter, Calculator and Voice Recorder. These functions are common is many Symbain phones. Nokia 5320 also has Active Notes function that lets you add multimedia content. One more interesting function Nokia 5320 has is that of a dictionary, English comes pre-installed but you can download lost of other language packs from Nokia's website. This dictionary really comes as a very handy tool.
Connectivity:
This phone has all connectivity option except Wi-Fi. It has got USB 2.0, Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP. The phone has Quad band GSM/EDGE/GPRS with HSDPA 3.6 mbps support. The Bluetooth pairing is pretty fast and the browsing Internet using EDGE network is also fast.
Gaming:
The phone had four games, Marble, Groove2, Guitar Hero, Jelly Chase. The sample phone, which I got also had FIFA trial version, which runs on the N Gage platform. The phone also has shortcut to N Gage downloads. There are thousands of games available for free which can be downloaded and installed on your phone.
Conclusion:
Nokia 5320 is a good XpressMusic phone that will appeal to young mobile phone buyers. The design and color combination of the phone might not appeal to people from all age group but it will certainly appeal to young mobile phone enthusiasts. The phone has so many music related functions that you tend to forget that its also a Symbian based smart phone from Nokia. This fact makes the phone appeal to a particular set of people. Symbian with Feature Pack 2, improved RAM and compact design of the phone made it appealing. The imaging quality is not that great but when it comes to music, the phone is pretty impressive and 8GB memory support seconds that fact. The music functionality of the phone suppresses its smart phone qualities. Overall this is a good XpressMusic phone from Nokia and will appeal to the young crowd that's for sure, plus points being attractive color schemes, good sound quality and compact design.
Conclusion:
Nokia 5320 is a good XpressMusic phone that will appeal to young mobile phone buyers. The design and color combination of the phone might not appeal to people from all age group but it will certainly appeal to young mobile phone enthusiasts. The phone has so many music related functions that you tend to forget that its also a Symbian based smart phone from Nokia. This fact makes the phone appeal to a particular set of people. Symbian with Feature Pack 2, improved RAM and compact design of the phone made it appealing. The imaging quality is not that great but when it comes to music, the phone is pretty impressive and 8GB memory support seconds that fact. The music functionality of the phone suppresses its smart phone qualities. Overall this is a good XpressMusic phone from Nokia and will appeal to the young crowd that's for sure, plus points being attractive color schemes, good sound quality and compact design.
If there is one device that has launched enough punch last year it definitely has to be the N82 and if there is something that generated even more buzz and fervor than the N82 then it was its Black Version. The black version is nothing but a colored cousin of the original N82. Looking sexier and more royal, N82 Black is touted to be yet another marketing gimmick from Nokia, which is known to always release similar black versions of its popular models ranging from N70 to N95 yet all. These days it’s a trend for mobile enthusiasts to wait for Black versions of a popular N series Model before they make their purchase plans. It does make sense to do so. Obviously a black version of any N series mobile does look sexier and packs in more punch.
Over the weeks we will be covering an in depth review of the N82 Black version hands on…
So keep watching this space.
Sony Ericsson has launched the W960i and folks at the Unofficial Sony Ericsson Blog reviewed it. The ultimate conclusion is Sony Ericsson W960i is one of the best Walkman series phones Sony Ericsson has delivered from its stable. Don’t believe me..this review will clear all your doubts.
Its been ages (not literally) Nokia N95 is launched and the guys at Gadget Nutz have written a mega review on the same. So all you people who want to go for the original N95, have a read first.
With the N81 launching with all pomp & show and rumors building around the launch of N82, Om Malik @ Gigaom has reviewed the N81 and after reading his review I came to an understanding that he is not quite happy with this Nokia gadget, he calls it a Sweet Agony. But there are many people who don not agree with what Om Malik has written but I really value Om Malik as a blogger...so his opinion really counts for anyone who is planning to buy N81 in near future.
