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.
7:43 PM
There is no autofocus there, and the pictures taken were really bad. Especially on dark areas. The better part is the video camera, which is slightly better since it can support a higher resolution during recording. It is a lot better than Sony Ericsson's in terms of video recording.
6:28 PM
Hello guys!
I have bought 5320_xpressmusic handset in Jan. 2009. it is good looking and all operations are very smooth. The camera result is nice and the quality of hearing music is really amazing. It is very hard to get RED COLOUR and i tried very much to get same. Compared to other phones it will definitely fulfill the needs of customers. Definitely I can say that it is the best present from NOKIA family to their customers. So why are you waiting for? Visit your nearest mobile store and be a proud owner of this wonderfull handset.
Regards,
kinginimattom@gmail.com
Cochin, Kerala
9:45 AM
hope I can have this phone someday...
3:15 PM
i bought it 2 days from this date i posted this..
wah ytd i play2 with it, fiddle here fiddle there..
then today i use check left 3 bar batt life..
batt life like lousy..
3:33 PM
Thats strange..you sure that you fully charged the battery before using it?
5:28 PM
hell iam ram i baught nokia 5320 but i have not stisify this phone .when i use two months disply problms is arising i hope this phone is very bad very delicate you go n70 and the models
5:30 PM
You should check with Nokia Care center..i am surprised to hear about this problem..
2:07 PM
i used n70&n73 before 5320 both are dead slow and supports only 2GB mini cards with bad battery backup and bad sound quality
11:18 PM
am using diz phn...gr8 phne till nw...and itz really difficult to get da red color
9:22 AM
Yeah Red one is tough to get man, most outgoing color. By the way, a beter version of this phone, Nokia 5630 XpressMusic has been launched by Nokia and NAMP has covered it, check out the coverage on NAMP.
1:57 AM
is it value for money...as it is cost around by 10k..???? comparing to other handset..???
7:23 AM
yeah its a good phone and value for money. 5320 is a nice phone at this price point if you are looking to satisfy your music needs,
12:39 AM
hey dude..thx 4 reply...wht can u say abt it's camera clearity & video recording.?/can we compare it with N73..???can we use it's flash as torchlight???pls do reply..i'll be greatful to u!!!!!!
8:04 AM
Camera quality and video recording is ok not very good but good. Also you cannot compare it with N73, this is a music dedicated phone so leek at it from that point. but its a nice phone as its Symbian based and not S40 based. Even N73 is Symbian based the version is the old one.
9:37 PM
Hey dudes i got this phone not too long ago about less than 2 weeks ago. its really easy to get the red one in Malaysia. lol .infact the red is soo common i purposely got blue. anyway i like the blue better ,its cooler,more lively and unique and further more i have 2 friends already using the red 1. if i wanted the red i could have gotten it straight away but the blue 1 i had to wait for it to be delivered so i finally got the blue 1 the next day. but i still really wanted to get the nokia N82 black but its like 1500 here and this phone is only literally half the price. i got it for 750...but so far i'm very satisfied with the phone. i love the sound quality, the camera isn't as bad as everyone says it is ,it just doesn't have the functions like certain sony ericsson w series phones that have auto focus and quite a few camera functions for a music phone but the sony ericsson's picture and sound quality is not up to par with nokia's xpressmusic line, you colud go try it out yourself, hopefully this helps who ever of you guys who wanna get this phone or is looking for an opinion on this phone,in my opinion its a great phone.SO HURRY UP AND GO OUT AND GET IT!!!!!
4:38 AM
hey this phone is an optimised piece and it offers at its best.
7:44 AM
Just wanna ask... i got prob with my Front Camera...
After i update my phone software, i got problems with my front camera.
Tried to turn it on and it says "Feature not supported"
Can anyone help me?
11:11 AM
@bigbear - Hmm..seems to be a very unique and peculiar problem, never came across such thing happening after the firmware update. Did you do a leagl firmware update or used some torrent. May be the firmware which you updated was corrupted. I guess its better to show the phone to some Nokia service center guys..will be of great help
7:17 AM
Its a gr8 fone... and i like it very much... but thing to remember is not to install any of those software from the torrents... it messed up mine... after i installed them it hung in the middle and when i restarted it... it gave me failed to startup error... finally i had to do a memory flash to get things in order... so be carefull
9:23 AM
does the dailled numbers and send messages are stored inside even it is deleted
3:52 PM
my phone cant open any application, its says that memory full but i have 4gb memory installed? does any one know how to format the internal memory of this?
6:28 PM
how to open the GPRS of this model? i have the same phone but i can't access the GPRS help me please