Nokia 5300 XpressMusic

In the past, Nokia has achieved only mediocre results with its music-oriented mobile phones. Its previous 5510 and 3300 releases stood out against the crowd due mostly to their odd wedge shape, but failed to deliver on substance because of poor quality and design. Nokia was quickly losing ground to Sony Ericsson and its line of Walkman-branded phones, and desperately needed something to turn around the trend. That desperation led to the advent of the XpressMusic brand and a move towards handsets tailored for music. In steps the Nokia 5300 XpressMusic, complete with dedicated audio keys, a 2.5mm earphone jack and wireless music downloads.

Design
The 5300 slider phone features a chunky, sporty design that's obviously aimed at the style-conscious iPod generation. Its hard-plastic case comes in silver for the faceplate and keypad, and powder white with either red or grey highlights for the sides. Measuring in at 92.4 by 48.2 by 20.7mm and weighing 106.2 grams, the 5300 won't be winning any size contests, but fits comfortably in the hand and grips well thanks to the anti-slip bands on the side.

Build quality is down on this phone: the materials felt cheap and the slider mechanism felt flimsy and would twist even when closed.

Located on the left side of the phone is a 2.5mm headset jack together with three dedicated audio keys, but Nokia has included a 3.5mm adaptor as well. On the right is the 1.3-megapixel camera, infrared port and volume keys, while at the top reside a power button, USB port and the input for the charger. Nokia has placed a microSD card slot beneath the battery cover; you don't have to turn the phone off and remove the battery, but it's still annoying the designers didn't make this an external feature. The 5300 comes with 32MB of inbuilt memory and can support up to 2GB microSD cards. You get a 256MB MicroSD card in the box, but we recommend getting a more practical 1GB card (less than AU$100).

The TFT LCD screen measures 2-inches diagonally, squeezing in 320 x 240 pixels with 262K colours. Brightness levels are excellent as is visibility, even in direct sunlight.

Features
Considering this is a music-oriented phone, we'll start with the 5300's audio capabilities. Nokia has updated its music player interface for the 5300, making it easier to change tracks using just the directional pad. Songs can be sorted by artist, album, genre, and even composer, and if a call comes through while a song is playing, the phone will automatically pause the track and divert to the incoming call. Supported audio formats include MP3, WMA, MID, AAC and AAC+, and Nokia's included Music Manager makes ripping files from a CD and transferring them to the phone easy. The phone includes 64-voice polyphonic ringtones, which sound clear even at loud volumes. An inbuilt FM radio is also included.

The 5300's camera is nothing to get excited about. Photos can be taken up to 1280 x 1024 pixels and videos at 176 x 144 pixels in 3GP format, with an 8x digital zoom on offer. Image quality is average with most pictures taken coming out slightly blurred or grainy due to the lack of autofocus. The gallery system is very quick, and in video mode can actually play the files when they're highlighted in the menu. As an actual phone, the 5300 is on par with most mobile phones in this price range. It runs the third edition of Nokia's S40 user interface with an updated Music Player interface, Active Standby with customisable shortcuts and font sizes. The tri-band phone also comes with Push-To-Talk functionality, voice dialing, voice recorder and speakerphone, plus the usual assortment of a calendar, calculator and currency converter utilities. Connectivity includes infrared and Bluetooth 2.0, and the headphones can even be wirelessly connected with A2DP support. Synchronising with a PC is simple using SyncML, or the included USB cable, and when connected, the 5300 can be used as a mass storage device. Message support includes SMS, MMS, IM and POP3/IMAP4.

Performance
Call quality for the 5300 is good, with conversations coming through clearly for both low and high volumes. Respondents didn't notice any significant loss in quality when using speakerphone, and the sound from the loudspeaker was great.

Paring with a Bluetooth headset or in-car system was fine, occurring without any hassles, and navigating through the interface is pleasant and intuitive. Music quality from the stereo speakers wasn't the greatest. We suspect most users would use the included wired headphones, but the speakers put out a lot more sound for music than voice calls and still sounded respectable at max volume.

Nokia claims the battery lasts just over nine days on standby or 3.2 hours of talk. We managed just under 10 hours for MP3 playback and a little over 3 hours of talk with heavy use, which is very respectable. The 5300 XpressMusic does what it sets out to achieve well, that is, a mobile phone with extensive audio capabilities, but as a phone only, there's nothing too compelling about it.

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