Nokia 5320 XpressMusic Review w/ unboxing pics ~ Cell Phone Reviews

Nokia 5320 XpressMusic Review w/ unboxing pics

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Written on 10/10/2008 03:22:00 PM by poison_ivy



I’ve managed to get a hold of Nokia’s latest music phone, the Nokia 5320 XpressMusic, the update to their Nokia 5310 Xpressmusic. Check out my unboxing of the Nokia 5320 XpressMusic on the slideshow below.





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Design

The Nokia 5320 XpressMusic is a bit bulky compared with the 5310 XpressMusic. The 5320 is a bit odd when held, maybe it’s because the bottom part is wider than the front. What the purpose of that design is, is beyond me. The dedicated music keys can be found on the left part of the device as well as the microSD card slot though you STILL have to open the battery compartment to open up the microSD slot. I hate that. Why do you have to put the card slot on the side if you still have to open the battery compartment? Though you don’t have to take out the battery (like some phones) to access the MicroSD card slot, it’s still a pain. On the right side of the device, you’ll find the volume and the camera keys, on top, the on/off button and on the bottom, the USB connection, 3.5mm audio slot, and the slot for the charger. There’s also a button on the upper right front portion of the device, similar to the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. The button is a dedicated shortcut key wherein you can assign it to your chosen application. The front and back of the device is made from shiny plastic wherein you can easily leave your fingerprints. I don’t know whether Nokia wants you to design your own XpressMusic with your fingerprints since the pock-marks on the side of the device doesn’t really make it that much attractive. There’s a 2 megapixel camera on the back with LED flash and a camera on the front for video calling.

I was a bit wary of the keypad design of the Nokia 5320 XpressMusic. It looks flat and has too many geometric designs. However, when I started typing text messages on it, it came as a surprise that the keypad was text friendly. They keys were evenly spaced that I wasn’t able to mistype anything.

Features

Naturally, since the Nokia 5320 XpresMusic is a music phone, I have to test out it’s audio capability. Now since I’m not really an audiophile (like I always say), I just tried to compare the sound quality with that of my Samsung Omnia. Using only the speakers and listening to Michael Buble’s album, the Nokia 5320 was able to deliver clear and high quality sounds but when you turn the volume to its fullest capacity, the sound became tinny but still listenable. Using the 3.5mm audio jack, sound quality was superb no matter what the volume setting is and probably even better if you use those expensive noise-canceling headsets.

The Nokia 5320 XpressMusic comes with a say and play feature which is just a fancy name for voice recognition. The feature itself is pretty cool; I only have to say the song name twice before the application recognizes it. That’s a compliment considering that with my accent and all, I’ve given up on most voice recognition software. Another feature that Nokia has been touting on the Nokia 5320 XpressMusic is the dedicated N-Gage gaming keys. As of writing, I still wasn’t able to download the N-Gage Software because my network operator sucks and I can’t get 3G signal in my home. Anyways, on landscape mode (with the keypad on the left side), the dedicated N-Gage gaming keys is the four way navigation button, the dedicated application key, and the rewind button. Though how I’ll be able to use that is beyond me.

The Nokia 5320 XpressMusic runs the 3rd edition of Symbian60, I think. It came as a surprise that it’s running S60 since I thought low to mid-range Nokia phones runs on S40. Oh well, that’s a plus factor since some people on the Symbian forums say that if that’s the case, you can probably run NSeries apps on the Nokia 5320 XpressMusic. The S60 doesn’t slow down the phone, in fact, I find that navigating this phone is much faster compared with my sister’s older Nokia N70 phone. It’s been a while since I’ve handled S60 devices so I don’t know how to close running applications on this device. With the old Nokia N70, you just hold the gallery button and press the “c” button and the application closes, this doesn’t seem to be the case with the 5320 so if anybody knows how to do that, drop me a line.

The Nokia 5320 XpressMusic that I got comes with QuickOffice but you have to purchase a license before you can use it. The Internet Browser is okay but is slow to render websites but it comes with a cool mouse icon when using the D-pad. The mouse changes to a finger pointing hand when you want to click on a link.

The Nokia 5320 comes with a 2 megapixel camera with no autofocus so some images come out blurry. It delivers decent picture though and the LED flash isn’t entirely useless.

Still haven’t tested the battery life, will update once I do.

Conclusion

The Nokia 5320 XpressMusic is another solid music phone by Nokia. The fact that it can be used to play N-Gage games means that consumers will get the best of both worlds: a music and a gaming phone. The boring design and average camera is quickly overshadowed by the fact that it’s running S60 so there are a lot of possibilities with this device in terms of applications.

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4 Comments

  1. Anonymous |

    Hi, thanks for the review, that's good to hear about the keypad, I was worried about that


    Speaking of the web browser, does this phone support youtube? Either youtube.com or the mobile version, can you see videos?

    THANKS!

     
  2. poison_ivy |

    Only the mobile version.

     
  3. laser doctor chennai |

    any body tried nokia n96...its harmful.does not have any class, the one i got flunked in just 1week.

     
  4. poison_ivy |

    @ laser doctor

    Haven't tried it, maybe you should wait for the 5800.

     

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