Nokia 5230 Review

Visually, the Nokia 5230 could be mistaken for any of the preceding touchscreen devices from the Finnish manufacturer, coming in the now familiar slim, block style design we know from devices such as the 5800 and 5530. But what Nokia have done here, with the 5230, is produce a handset that offers specification most top end smartphones would be happy with. But we need to make the distinction right now; the Nokia 5230 is not a smartphone, even though it operates on the S60 operating system and brings with it all the advantages that S60 phones offer.

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Nokia 5230 reviews

So, what is the difference? Well, in essence you can say that the smartphone devices from Nokia are found under the Nseries or Eseries label, handsets aimed at business users, and people who demand the best in multimedia entertainment from their phones. So, whilst the 5230 is a S60 phone, it doesn’t come into that category, as we will see.

What the Nokia 5230 *does* deliver, is a handset that comes in at an extremely competitive price point, making it an odds-on certainty to appear on the Prepay markets, as well as on all the low price point tariff deals available. We only need to look at the success of handsets such as the Tocco Lite and LG Viewty Lite to see that consumers on the Prepay market are as keen to purchase quality touchscreen devices as are consumers in the contract market.

But we shouldn’t let the low price point deceive us. Whilst the Nokia 5230 is indeed a budget handset it comes with a strong feature set that knocks other handsets in its price range for six. This is something Nokia have been doing a lot recently, packing in high specifications into modestly priced handsets, with the 5800 being a prime example.

So, let’s take a look in more detail at what the 5230 offers. Size wise the numbers match exactly the 5800 Xpress Music; dimensions measure up at 111 x 51.7 x 15.5mm, but for some reason the 5230 carries a little extra weight, but at just an extra 6g at 115g, it is unlikely you will notice. The display on the 5230 is a resistive TFT touchscreen, supporting up to 16 million colours and measuring an impressive 3.2 inches across, with a screen resolution of 360 x 640 pixels. Being a resistive touchscreen, the Nokia 5230 is optimised for input either by finger, or using a stylus. And with stylus support, we also get handwriting recognition.

All the data entry options are available on the 5230; aside from handwriting recognition the phone operates with a standard alphanumeric keypad, which can be used with either multi-tap or T9 predictive text, as well as offering a mini QWERTY keyboard which works well with the stylus and a full QWERTY keyboard which is optimised for typing with fingers. When using the full screen QWERTY the phone display automatically rotates into landscape view, whilst all other options can be used in either landscape or portrait mode. By using the resistive screen, Nokia will also keep happy a certain section of female users, who find capacitive touchscreens harder to use with longer fingernails!

Although the Nokia 5230 is not marketed under the Xpress Music label, it still delivers a full on music experience; we’ve already mentioned the fact that the 5230 runs S60, so we find the full media player as found on other S60 devices. The player is compatible with numerous music files, including MP3, WMA, WAV, RA and AAC. Music files are arranged in convenient, easy to search groupings, such as by Genre, Artist, Album and Composer. Some preset playlists exist on the device, and it is a simple procedure to set up your own playlists. The 5230 includes a 3.5mm audio output jack which is almost a standard offering on most Nokia devices these days, and there is plenty of memory available to store tracks. As well as having 70MB of internal storage space, the 5230 supports MicroSD memory cards, allowing the memory to be expanded up to 16GB. The 5230 also includes a Stereo FM radio with RDS support, for those moments you want to tune in or catch up with the latest news on your local FM station. The radio has an option for up to 20 stations to be preset into the memory, and these can be easily scanned through so you are never far away from your station of choice.

Data connectivity is also well set up on the 5230, with support for HSDPA up to 3.6Mbps, which is an excellent option if you like to download your music on the move. With built in support for Ovi on the 5230, downloading music and applications on the 5230 is not something that is going to hold you up. The inclusion of HSDPA is a welcome bonus, especially as one of the features not to make the 5230’s notable feature list is WiFi. Other connection options include GPRS, EDGE and HSCSD, and the 5230 makes use of Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP support for connecting your device wirelessly to a PC as well as allowing for wireless audio transmission.

Keeping in mind the budget price of the Nokia 5230, we find ourselves looking for the weakness in the specification, because up until now it has been very impressive. That weakness comes in the imaging department. If your mobile phone takes the place of your digital camera, then you may want to think twice about the 5230. Sporting a 2.0 Megapixel camera, it takes pics that are adequate at best. There is no autofocus support, and no flash, either. For a “point ‘n’ shoot” option, it will suffice, but nothing more.

We shouldn’t be too harsh, though. There are few, if any, handsets that fit the price level of the 5230 that can offer such an impressive array of features. Even higher level handsets would find it hard to stand toe to toe with this device. Which leaves us to ponder on this; “If Nokia can offer this type of device at this price point, just what can they offer premium handset owners?”