Nokia 5700 XpressMusic Review

Introduction:

The development of the mobile industry has changed phones so much, that it has been long since they were simply “phones”. Over time, they have grown smaller, while acquiring more and advanced functionality. We started playing games on them, writing messages, listening to music, and storing images of beautiful moments with the built-in cameras. We are now even capable of being permanently on-line, making use of the option for fast Internet connection. One of the devices that combine all these, as well as a lot more opportunities, is the Nokia 5700 XpressMusic.

The XpressMusic line is designed for fast access to your favorite songs as well as superb quality of the reproduced sound. Specially made music keys for easy control and securing song enjoyment are at your disposal.

Like its “predecessor”, the 3250, Nokia 5700 XpressMusic features a rotating lower part. By only one turn you can use it in several function modes (phone, camera, music, video call and video view). However, it is not difficult to notice a few significant improvements of the device: quad-band GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800 and 1900 MHz), with 3G networks (WCDMA 2100) support with video conversation option and QVGA (240 x 320 pix) display.

The unit comes in a standard red box with two levels inside and the set includes the following items:

• Nokia 5700 XpressMusic phone;
• Nokia Battery BP-5M;
• Nokia Travel Charger AC-5;
• Nokia Music Headset HS-44 / AD-44;
• micro SD card (size varies by region);
• Nokia Connectivity Cable DKE-2 (USB cable);
• CD ROM with Nokia PC Suite and add-on applications;
• User guide.
  

AD-44 is an adapter, which can be plugged into the telephone, with buttons for controlling the player and answering/rejecting a call. All this, as well as the availability of a microphone, makes it a fully-functional handsfree. In the set, there are also HS-44 headphones for inserting into the cochlear duct; the plugging of standard stereo headphones is also possible by using the 3.5 mm socket of the adapter.

Design:

Nokia 5700 XpressMusic is a candy bar design and its appearance is a mixture of the Nokia 5300 coloration and the rotating lower part design of Nokia 3250. The device has two fronts, but, unlike Samsung UpStage, there is only one display here, whereas the rotating part turns the Nokia from a phone into a player in a matter of one rapid movement.

The unit’s shape relies entirely on curvy lines and round edges, and consists of two parts: an upper one with the display and the control buttons, and a lower one, where the numeric pad is located.

The phone has five functional modes depending on the position, at which the lower part has been swung. Thus, the most frequently used applications are only “a turn” away. The unit is in a phone mode when the numeric pad is at the side of the display. Camera mode is activated through a single swing of 90 degrees to the left. In order to activate the music mode, one should turn the lower part of the phone 180 degrees to the right. Turning the camera towards the user during a video conversation will switch the video call mode. When watching videos, one can turn the lower part 90 degrees to the left and the displayed image will take on a landscape position; thus the video view mode is activated, at which the loudspeaker is pointed straight at the viewer for best sound perception.



The manufacturer offers the above model in three color versions: the choice is between red, grey, and black. For all of them white and silver are predominant; only part of the back, the frame of the display, and the side parts are differently colored.

The device that we received for testing was the black version. It is made of glossy white and silver plastic and matt black one. The black-colored parts on both sides are rubber-coated, adding in this way to the comfortable feel while holding the unit and during conversation; thus the likelihood to drop it due to carelessness is considerably smaller as well. There is a tiny gap between these parts and the display, and we have noticed that after a certain period of use dust accumulates there, requiring periodical cleaning. Apart from the gap, the fact that the position of the black-colored parts is slightly higher than the display also helps dust retention.


The dimensions of the unit are 108 x 50.5 x 17.3 mm (4.3 x 2.0 x 0.7 inches) and weighs 115 gr. (4.05 oz), which ranks it among the big and heavy phones. Yet the device is not inconvenient to use and even goes well into the jeans’ pocket because it is slim enough not to bulge there.

Model	Dimension (Inches)	Dimension (MM)	Weight (OZ)	Weight (Gramms)
Nokia 5700	4.25" x 1.98" x 0.68"	108 x 50.5 x 17.3	4,1	115
Nokia 3250	4.09" x 1.97" x 0.78"	104 x 50 x 20	4,1	115
Nokia 5300	3.63" x 1.89" x 0.81"	92.5 x 48 x 21	3,8	107
Sony Ericsson W960	4.29" x 2.16"x 0.62"	109 x 55 x 16	4,2	119

The display size is 2.2 inches and the resolution 240 x 320 pix (QVGA), featuring 16 million colors. Its brightness and strong contrast secure very good visibility even at direct sunlight, so that operating the device will be trouble-free. This feature owes much to the sensor that adjusts the brightness of the display depending on how strong the daylight is. This intelligent control also contributes to maximum durability of the battery after charging. We would very much like to see this feature in more devices.

In order to easily control all the telephone functions, Nokia have foreseen a total of 25 buttons.

The buttons of the numeric pad are situated step-like at the lower part of the telephone. They are quite big and despite being tightly fit next to each other, without any space between, pressing is fairly easy.

The media keys are at the reverse side. They are three and take the whole lower part. Depending on the current operating mode, the keys perform different functions. In music mode these are rewind, play/pause/stop, and fast forward; in camera mode – zoom out, capture key, and zoom in. Their size makes them very easy to operate, no matter whether pressed by the tip of the finger or its soft part. With the exception of the white colored play/pause/stop key, all the other buttons on both sides of the lower part are silver. They are evenly backlit in white; controlling it is done through the reading of the above mentioned sensor, regulating the display brightness. In a very dark room (or at night) one can make out that, apart from illuminating the buttons, the light seeps through the white part around them. Though this fact will cause no problem in operating the unit, it may be somewhat irritating.



The following buttons are located on the upper part, just below the display: five-position navigational joystick, left and right selection keys, call and end keys. Moving the joystick is fairly inconvenient; it would have been far better, had it been manufactured with a better tactile feedback and easier to press. It is encircled by white plastic and the rest of the keys are located round it. Their surface relief is dash-shaped “-“ and colored respectively blue, green, and red; these buttons are constantly lit, regardless of the light intensity of the environment. Pressing them is very easy, with a good tactile feedback.

*When the lower part of the telephone is rotated at 90 degrees (for example, when in camera mode), it is a serious obstacle to operating the joystick, making it exceptionally difficult. In case you have taken a fancy to Nokia 5700 XpressMusic, it is indispensable to test this!

The clear and menu keys on the black part of the phone, on the right and left from the selection keys respectively, have the same dash-shape and are positioned vertically. They are white and their function is designated below in the same color.

On the left, there are the volume up and down keys – the same as the clear and menu ones but not in white, bearing only a mark of their function (+ and -). Upon the white part above them, there is one of the loudspeakers. All the four buttons are not backlit but this is actually rendered useless by their well-felt relief, so missing them is not an option. Operating them is more difficult than the rest; however, using your nail or the tip of the finger will do the job quite easily.

The charging connector, the micro SD card slot, and the mini USB connector are situated on the other side. They are covered by one shared lid, which can be opened effortlessly by nail and fits tightly when closed, so that the outline of the unit stays intact. We would rather it remained so after several months of use. In addition to, and despite the availability of Bluetooth, Nokia have installed an IR port as well, whose “eye” is located just above the rubber cap.


On one side of the lower part there are the 2-megapixel camera and the LED flashlight, and on the other - the second loudspeaker.

Typically for Nokia, the Power key is bi-functional: except for switching on and off, it secures fast access to changing profiles, as well as locking the keypad and a few more functions. It is on the standard location for any Nokia device – on top and precisely in the middle.

The microphone is at the bottom and next to it there are a 2.5 mm socket and a place to secure a neck or a hand strap.

Now it has been made clear that the Nokia 5700 XpressMusic is a combination of several devices and switching from one to another is done simply by twisting its lower part.

Interface:

Nokia 5700 XpressMusic is a smartphone using Symbian Operating System and S60 Interface, as all the other smartphones of the brand. The operating system version is 9.2, as with the top models of N95 and E90. We are glad that it does not use the older 9.1 version, because 9.2 brings positive features only.

Although slightly personalized (with themes and icons arrangement), this system is in fact a full Symbian 9.2 and many things of the phone software will be as with the other models.

The top part of the home screen displays a clock and the date, as well as the usual signal strength and battery, while the name of the carrier or Offline can be seen in the middle. The Offline tag indicates that the 5700 works only as an “organizer” and multimedia device with the phone function switched off (that’s handy for using the smartphone during a flight). Just below these is located a row of 6 shortcuts which can be personalized to suit you best. The rest of the display, below them, is used for “notifications” – this is where missed calls, upcoming tasks (or To-Do in the calendar), received messages are displayed, as well as the music player status (the song that’s played at the moment). Located at the bottom of the screen are the two software buttons which can also be personalized from the Settings menu.

The main menu can be viewed as 3x4 grid of icons that can also be displayed as a list (it’s chosen directly from the main menu) but the icons are not animated in both cases. Just like the 6120 classic and N76, here you have two new possible visualizations – Horseshoе and V-shaped, which are interestingly-looking, but inconvenient to use 3D menus. The numeric keypad buttons can be used as shortcuts – a function which is much better implemented than version 6 of the S60 interface but still a lot of things should be changed: as the menu not always holds 12 icons (they can be more or less), scrolling up/down shows you different ones that should be associated with the keypad – but they’re not. Like other Symbian phones, you can rearrange the icons in the menu and move links in folders.

A nice extra of the Symbian v9.2 is that each application which is active has a small circle next to its icon in the menu. For example, if you left any application running in the background, than in the main menu next to "Applications" link an indication would appear. As all other Symbian S60 phones, you can see the running applications by holding the Menu key, and shut some of them off by selecting them and using the C key.

The menu can be personalized by using themes, and if you combine various screensavers and personalized homescreens, two identical phones can look quite different. Definitely, the operating system provides many good personalization options.

Phonebook:

Symbian phones are not only smart pocket computers, they are phones at first place. And every phone should have a good system for managing the contacts. The phonebook of Symbian S60 phones is one of the best on the market, together with those of Windows smartphones. All the contacts are displayed as a list and if there is a picture ID, it can be seen in the top left corner of the screen as a thumbnail with a very small size (it’s the same when you have an incoming call and that’s why we find this feature useless) when you select the contact. If you want to search, you type in directly from the keypad and searching is done for the whole name (not only the first word), even if the name is saved in more than one field (first and last name for example). If you want to edit a contact, you can only change the already defined fields. For adding more information you need to select the Add Detail menu. When adding a new contact you are provided with the “basic” fields, but with the “Add Detail” function you have almost no restrictions on the fields and their number and you can add a lot of phone numbers.


We also like having the option for adding a given field several times and in that manner for example we are able to record the numbers of three phones each one with a status “Mobile”.

The phone has a set of voice commands – they are speaker independent and you don’t have to “train” every command, something that can save you a lot of precious time. By holding the right soft key, the “recognizer” turns on and you can say a name (from the phonebook) to be dialed. Names like “Father”, “Brother”, “test”, “John” and “Neo” were no problem, but we had no success with others like “Amy” for example.

The commands can activate various programs or perform different functions, like “New SMS” for example, but a list with different capabilities must be added to the menu as not all of them are added by default so that they’re easier to recognize with any speaker – thus by adding only the ones you need, you can achieve best possible accuracy without the annoying training. Аnd it works, the voice commands were very accurate and we rarely experienced mistakes when launching applications.

A voice recorder can record your voice using the speakerphone. The duration of the recording is limited only by the available memory and as you can record on the memory card, you can have a long recording. In that way the smartphone can replace your voice recorder without needing third party software.

Organizer:

The Organizer tools are in a folder called “Organiser” in the main menu. The calendar can be viewed by month or week and of course, you can easily add notes (Meeting, Memo, Anniversary, To-do) with options for alarm, to a particular day with a few clicks. To-Do notes are also displayed on the homescreen if you have set the active standby in such way.


Notes are just annotations with no option for adding an alarm like the To-Do notes. The Converter works with various quantities (Length, Weight, etc.) but the interface has not changed much, compared to older versions. The calculator is very simple and is not scientific one, which would suit a smartphone.

In the Clock menu, you will find the alarms. In Symbian 9.2 you can add as many alarms as you wish and for each one you could choose whether it should repeat (daily, weekly, or workdays). This is excellent and there is no stupid limitation in the number of the alarms like with other even smart phones (i.e. Symbian 9.1 allows for only one alarm that even can not be set to repeat).

The World Clock is also located in this menu and you can add various cities that you like to view – that's very convenient and saves a lot of time compared to the standard way with “moving across the world map". You can easily review given cities, which you are interested in without searching them each time.

The File Manager is in the Settings – Data Manager menu, together with the application manager (to remove installed programs), and a few other options.

Messaging:

The Messages menu has nothing new to offer – you can easily compose SMS/MMS or Email and located in My Folder are templates which are handy for text that is often used in messages. The fast T9 can help you enter text quickly. The EDGE and UMTS connection helps for fast retrieving of Emails. In order to limit the generated traffic, you can set the phone to download the headers only, or to limit the size in KB.

Connectivity:

Nokia 5700 is quad-band GSM/EDGE phone supporting UMTS 2100. Being a quad-band GSM phone, 5700 will work on any GSM network in the world. The 2100MHz is the band used in European and Asian GSM UMTS (3G) networks and this means that you won’t be able to use 3G in USA.

For local connectivity, it supports Bluetooth v2.0 + EDR (enhanced data rate) which allows for fast transfer between the phone and compatible device. We transferred with speed of 120KB per second, which means a MP3 song (approximately 5MB) will be transferred for about 45 seconds via Bluetooth. This is a fast speed for Bluetooth, but still you can obtain better transfer speed using a miniUSB cable: in the Data Transfer mode we were able to copy files to the phone’s memory card with speed of 810KB per second, so we transferred the same song for 6 seconds, almost 8 times faster than with Bluetooth. Once you have connected the phone to a computer, you can choose either Data Transfer, PC Suite or Media player modes.

The user also disposes of an IR port, which will come in handy if one needs to connect the 5700 to devices that do not support Bluetooth, usually indispensable for information exchange with older models.

With synchronization, you can use the PC Suite of the set or download a newer version from the Internet site of Nokia. We used the same version we had used with Nokia N76 without any problems. We used the Bluetooth connection between the computer and the phone for the synchronization of 140 entries (contacts & calendar entries) and the transfer took us less than 20 sec., which is a very good speed.

Internet:

Thanks to the UMTS data and the QVGA resolution of the display, loading and viewing a standard HTML web pages is easy job. The phone has no problem rendering all pages and reading phoneArena's news was a pleasure. Scrolling left-to-right and top-to-bottom is done with the phone's joystick, and a mini-map shows you, which part of the page you are looking at. The pages loaded pretty fast and as a whole, we had a great experience with the browser, so we definitely like it more than the Internet Explorer, built in Pocket PC phones based on Windows Mobile. The browser can load RSS feeds for even faster access to information.


What we also loved about it is the history: when you use 'back' to see pages you've seen earlier, you see the pages as thumbnails, you can open from the phone's cache.

Camera:

Like every modern phone, 5700 has a built-in digital camera with resolution of 2 mega-pixels and a small photoflash LED. It is started 3 seconds after twisting the lower part of the phone when the whole screen turns into a horizontal interface. We were surprised that although the phone operates on Symbian 9.2, this interface is not like those of N95 and N76, but is much simplified. In this way Nokia want to show that the phone is not of the multimedia series, without intentionally reducing the quality of the camera images.

There are several modes in the Options menu: Video, Panorama, Night, Sequence, Self-Timer(10/20/30sec). You can use the settings to adjust the White Balance, Color filter and the photoflash (on/off/auto) and the resolution and compression of the photos taken.

Two seconds after pressing the shutter button, the photo shows on the display and after pressing the button again you can make a new photo after another 1.5 – 2 seconds. 4 seconds between two photos is good time, allowing you to take lots of pictures.

The quality of the photos depends strongly on the light, at which they are taken. Best results are achieved at daylight, while using the night-mode will not lead to impressive photo quality: the image is rather “dotted” with plenty of interference or the so-called “noise”. When photo-shooting indoors, the flash will be of certain use, but in reality it is not capable of illuminating more distant objects. If you attempt taking pictures at close range, the result will be disappointing for its lack of focus and the image – unusable.



The Panorama regime offers an easy to use software showing by a gray/red arrow whether you have to move closer of away to/from the previous photo when taking the second one, to put together the panorama. Unfortunately, it is limited to two photos only and we would like to be able to take at least 3 or even 4-5 in the best case. Yet there is no point in using the panorama since the end result is a photo of a size much smaller than 2 megapixels.

You can also shoot a video with maximum resolution of QVGA 320х240 and up to 15 frames per second, which is less than the necessary 24, but is still usable. Compression decreases quality but the videos can still be viewed on a computer.

Nokia 5700 XpressMusic sample video at 320x240 pixels resolution

Multimedia:

You can view photos from the memory in the gallery where the files are visualized as a vertical list with small thumbnails. The 3D gallery of the N-series phones is missing here, too, like in 6120. The video-clips are viewed in a RealPlayer which has a fullscreen option. In our test we used QVGA videos in MPEG4 H.263 and were surprised to see that they were chopped up as if streamed from slow-connection Internet. The same videos can be viewed without problems on E65 whose processor is much slower (220 instead of 369 MHz). Our attempt at opening a H.264 video resulted in what we had expected – only the sound was heard.

The music player is the one known from the N95 and other Symbian 9.2 N-series smartphones and is the probably the most advanced one used in Nokia. It allows for filtering the music by artist/album/genre, as on a dedicated music player.

The Now Playing interface will visualize the Album art cover if one is attached to the file, the track information and the functions of the D-pad, as it will act as a shortcut. This interface is good but we still thing that can be optimized to show larger image.

You have 4 equalizers (classical, jazz, pop and rock) and you can also add additional custom ones. The audio settings options include stereo widening, balance and loudness.

The sound quality is very good, and thanks to the build-in loudspeakers the volume is quite loud, but not as loud as the one of Nokia N95 which also has a build in stereo loudspeakers.When the phone is in music mode the two speakers will be on the left side which will help for higher volume, but we prefer to listen to music in the phone mode, in which you have left and right speaker and more-noticeable stereo effect. You have to connect stereo earpieces if you want to listen to music with higher quality. You will need them to turn on the radio, too, because they will act as aerial. You can save up to 50 stations with names. The 5700 XpressMusic is Bluetooth Stereo enabled (A2DP) and that’s why you can also listen to music with one of Nokia’s Bluetooth stereo headset models BH-501 or BH-601 for example.

Software:

Nokia 5700 has about 31 MB of free memory which can be increased with a maximum of 2 GB by a microSD card. The phone has 64 MB RAM but after the system is loaded, about 20 MB remain for the user.

You have two pre-installed applications (2 games): Marble, where you have to fit balls of the same color so that they destroy one another, City Bloxx, where you have to build structures with a different size by putting blocks one on top of the other. We liked all two games and find them very suitable to make good use of one’s free time.

We have been surprised by the fact that in this unit (in contrast to 6120) there is no PDF reader or Quick Office; the only pre-installed applications being the two games. Obviously, Nokia have reckoned that those, who will take interest in the model, will mostly make use of its amusement capacity. However, this will hardly be a problem, since all kinds of applications are downloadable from the Internet and installable afterwards.

Performance:

Nokia 5700 uses the same processor, which we discussed with 6120 and N76 – a 369 MHz ARM11. This is the fastest processor ever to be installed in a device of the company, so we hope it will be used in the forthcoming new models as well. Its speed is tangible – when operating the unit you will not be irritated by slow-downs and “thoughtfulness”.

Sub-menus are opened almost instantly after pressing the button. The only thing that we noticed is the delay of about a second until activating some of the player functions after pressing the respective button. This slow response is rather surprising, given the fact that the model belongs to the music-oriented XpressMusic series.

We also tested the signal reception of the phone and Nokia 5700 showed results around the average – 4.5 of 10. We would say that this index ranks the telephone close to 6120 and E65.

When receiving a call, the ringtone sound is strong and well-audible, since both loudspeakers are engaged in reproducing it. And if you are still uneasy about hearing, there is the vibration; the latter, however, can be felt only when the telephone is kept in a pocket tightly adhering to your body.

During conversation you hear a very loud sound, though with a tangible background noise. This might cause the voice of the collocutor seem somewhat unreal, which will hardly hamper communication, yet we should note it.

The other side also hears you loudly with a slight emphasis on the bass, but otherwise very clearly and without any noise or echo.

The official technical data in the documentation of Nokia 5700 present the following duration depending on the way the telephone is being used:

Battery	Talk time	Video call time	Video playback time	Music playback time	Standby time
BP-5M	Up to 3.5 hours GSM Up to 2.5 hours WCDMA	Up to 1.7 hours	Up to 4 hours	Up to 10 hours	Up to 12 days GSM Up to 270 hours WCDMA

In order to test how the battery copes in reality, we tested its endurance by talking in a GSM network. The experiment showed that the device kept working for 6 hours and 5 minutes of continuous conversation. This was a surprising achievement in view of the fact that it was a time much longer than the one stated in advance.

Conclusion:

The new Nokia smartphone 5700 is definitely the most functional device from the XpressMusic series. Combining the positive characteristics of two previous models (Nokia 3250 and 5300), it is of itself an “aggregate” of several devices, united in one. Only one fast and easy twist of its lower part provides you with a music player; one more twist – here is the camera, ready to shoot a memorable moment. The combination of telephone and player in one is a guarantee that you will not miss an important call while listening to your favorite album.

And with the additional 3G functionality you are at liberty to not only listen to, but see the person on the other side as well. You can also make use of this feature for fast access to the Internet.

A 369 MHz processor takes care for the management of all these functions; it secures the rapid work and response of the unit. This is the fastest processor ever installed on a Nokia device (even faster than that of the N95 top-model). The superb QVGA display does an excellent job with the visualization of clips; their realistic reproduction being secured by the 16 million colors.

We are convinced that the new XpressMusic model will attract numerous admirers – not only by way of its functionality, but also due to the facility of operating both the telephone and the player.