Nokia 5320 XpressMusic Review

Introduction:

The XpressMusic line of Nokia has always been mainly targeting the people of young spirit. Besides the music, they usually have one more passion – games.

The new model of the Finnish giant has as a purpose to satisfy exactly those needs. It employs a musical chip, which should provide a high quality sound and is equipped with a 3.5 mm jack for all types of headsets or speakers. On top of that, it runs on the Symbian OS with S60 interface (3rd Еdition, Feature Pack 2). This is the environment of the N-Gage platform, which is Nokia’s strongest hand regarding mobile games. Unfortunately, at the time this review was written the N-Gage site did not yet have support for 5320.

The package includes:

Design:

The appearance corresponds to the audience it targets. It is not stylish, not elegant and even slightly thick. Comparing the 5320 to a fashion phone will be like comparing Avril Lavigne (the skater type) to Heidi Klum (top-model). That’s why it will suit the young audience just fine. It has aggressive design and it’s light, making it pocket friendly.



You can compare the Nokia 5320 XpressMusic with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

The 2” QVGA display supports 16 million colors, which provide a very well-saturated and pleasant image. When exposed on direct sunlight the picture fades and even though it’s not nice, you can work with the phone just fine.

Over the display is located the video calling camera and a single, hard to press button, which can be assigned to the function of your choice. The soft buttons, the SEND/END keys and the D-pad are jammed into a very small space and are a pain to use. The D-pad is the only one with a noticeable relief, and all the other buttons are small and therefore hard to press.

The numeric keypad is specifically outlined, to facilitate playing the games. It cannot be compared to the original buttons of the old N-Gage phones, but as a whole it offers comfortable use and distinct click when pressed.

Both sides have an interesting pattern, which doesn’t provide better grip. Here we have the music controls, the microSD slot, the volume rocker and the camera shortcut. Overall, they are not user-friendly, because they have a barely distinctive relief and a weak tactile feedback.

The bottom houses the microphone and connectors for the charger, the headphones (3.5 mm jack) and the data cable (microUSB). The opposite side houses the power button, which is rather hard to press.

As a whole, the design will fit the teen lifestyle, but the hard to use buttons could be quite annoying.

Interface:

Since Nokia 5320 is based on the Symbian OS with S60 interface (3rd Еdition, Feature Pack 2), it is equipped with all software extras present in the latest smartphones (e.g. N78 and 6220).

On the home screen, you can place three variants of a standby application with all of them giving you fast access to the basic functions of the phone. We liked Nokia default the most (including shortcuts to the player, search, the web browser and gallery), since it is very simple and offers applications which are really important for this model.

As in the previous models you have the option to change the look of the main menu. You can either have a grid, list, horseshoe or V-shaped. You may think we are conservative but we prefer the standard positioning. Besides, in the last two options there is an annoying lag when jumping from one icon to another.


Phonebook:

Contacts

As in all Symbian S60 based phones, here also, you can save as many contacts as you want with the only limitation being the availability of free memory to store them. Besides the standard two names, mobile and a land line, you can add various details to each name. The list includes things like pictures (large size), ringtone, nickname, title, date of birth and even an assistant’s number. Searching is done by both names but unfortunately, it cannot be activated by entering numbers at the homescreen. This is a function that is becoming more and more popular even in the non-smartphones.

Organizer:

From the menu Office you can set an unlimited number of alarms, which is a wonderful feature that will decrease drastically the chance of you oversleeping for work or school.

The calendar can be viewed by month, week day or To-do notes. The user is able to save appointments, notes, anniversaries and the To-dos we already mentioned.


The other applications in this menu give you access to active (pictures, sounds and videos can be added) and regular notes, calculator, dictionary (if there are no other languages installed, it acts as a thesaurus and it has an option to pronounce the words) and unit converter.


For viewing of Office 2003 documents, the phone is equipped Quickoffice. Small files are visualized correctly but a more complex Excel table can be a real challenge. If you need to edit files and the support of Office 2007 is important to you, you’ll need to buy an additional license. You are able to view PDF documents (via Adobe PDF), but due to the small size of the screen, you’ll have to scroll a lot. Also, the fact that moving to the next page is done through the options menu is rather inconvenient.

There’s more than enough space available for applications – 160 MB built-in and a 1 GB microSD card.

Messages:

It’s nice to have a good e-mail client with besides the ability to send SMS and MMS. If you have your mail on a popular server, you won’t have to enter the settings manually.


Connectivity:

The fast and easy Internet access is very important for the young generation, because it is the main source of information for them. The phone has what to offer in this aspect.

The browser is extremely good. It loads heavy pages like PhoneArena’s homepage fast and without any troubles. The ace up the sleeve 5320 has, is the easy navigation for which contributes the automatic visualization of a page map after pressing and holding a specific direction on the D-pad. On top of that, there are handy shortcuts to zoom in/out (*/#) and pan view (8), and the text shrinks to fit the screen. Overall, we are very happy with this element of the phone.

Camera:

Usually, the camera is not one of the strengths of the music-oriented phones. In our case, it is 2-megapixel one with flash but without autofocus, which allows it to make pictures very quick. It has a simple interface and you can also activate a row shortcuts to the panoramic and night mode, sequence mode (up to 6 shots) and a flash. It won’t give you access to the white balance, effects and the self-portrait feature.

The pictures are far from perfect. Even photographs made in broad daylight are characterized with a lot of noise and lack of detail, and the colors are unreal. Indoors, the situation is worse, but at least the relatively strong flash helps so the pictures are not that blurry. And if taking pictures at a party, you will be actually able to recognize the people on them the next day.

Camera Interface

You are able to record QVGA videos at 10 fps (instead of the 15 promised) with sound. This makes them very choppy, but overall, watchable.

Nokia 5320 XpressMusic sample video at 320x240 pixels resolution

Multimedia:

The key feature of the phone is the ability to play music. You can sort tracks by artist, album, genre and composer or to build your own playlists. When a song is playing, you can see its album art (if any). The loudspeaker sound is loud but quite sharp, which can be annoying at times. Luckily, the earphones included in the package are of good quality and will let you enjoy the music. The presence of a 3.5 mm jack allows you to use even better ones. During a test with mid-level headphones, 5320 performed at the same level as iPod Touch, which is a serious proof for the quality of the built-in musical chip. You also have an equalizer (with the option to save your own) and audio settings (balance, power, stereo widening), which have a serious influence over the sound.


The phone offers radio with RDS, letting you store up to 50 stations. This is very easy, especially with the offered option to look up in internet for the most popular ones in the region you are in.

Unfortunately, you will not be able to watch quality videos on Nokia 5320 XpressMusic. At QVGA resolution and MPEG4/h.264 codec, the sound and image are very choppy. In addition, h.263 files play as music tracks. At lower resolution rates, everything runs smoothly but this takes us years back in the evolution of the phone multimedia.

Software:

An interesting extra here is the voice-controlled music search. You have a few seconds to pronounce the name of the song, artist or playlist you want to hear and the phone will automatically play the closest match. Although this feature is quite fun, we couldn’t manage to find a real use for it.


Another key element are the games and by default you have Marble, Jelly Chase, Groove 2 and Guitar Rock Tour. Each one of them offers a different challenge and you can waste some time since they are not demos. Unfortunately, the model is not yet included in the N-Gage site as a supported one, but we expect this to happen soon.

Performance:

Except for the annoying lag in the visualization of the “exotic” views of the (horseshoe and V-shaped), the phone runs at a great speed and similarly to 6120 classic, the applications open almost immediately.

The 5320 is definitely good for talking. The sound in heard in the receiver is loud enough and you will understand everything even in a noisy environment but the will voices sound monotonous. At the other end of the line, the situation is even better. At times, you may even have to turn the sound down, so it doesn't bother you. The loudspeaker is useful, but like with most phones, the voices sound quite robot-like.

According to the official data supplied by the manufacturer, the battery has to provide around 3.5 hours of talk or 10 days in standby mode. The music maniacs will get the great 24 hours of continuous play.

Conclusion:

Nokia 5320 XpressMusic offers precisely the things a young person will look for in a musical phone – good sound and attractive-but-not-for-everyone design. You also get the bonuses that come with the OS; Web browser, and the available option to install various applications (including the future N-Gage support) and personalization. On top of that, it is one of the cheapest new Symbian phones with a base price of $260 (without a contract). Its main drawbacks are related to the uncomfortable buttons and the inability to play quality videos.

If you are looking for a good music phone at a good price, this phone is just for you. We recommend it to people under 26 or to young-spirited individuals.