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I think Nokia has stopped taking care of the outer body of its phones. Within two to three days, this phone will have lots of scratches on its body that it will start looking an old phone very soon. No matter how delicately you handle this machine.
Nokia seems to be getting aggressive in the music domain. After the popularity of 5800 it was necessary to reach masses which compelled Nokia to make 5530 for everyone. Though, this decently priced phone doesn’t share everything a smart phone does but it still does not turn you down in most of the cases.
Good
- 2.9″ 16M-color TFT LCD, touchscreen display
- 3.2 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash and VGA@30fps video
- Soft QWERTY keyboard option
- 4GB microSD card memory expansion inside the box
- FM radio with RDS
- Nice sound, standard 3.5mm audio jack, Stereo speakers
- Bluetooth with A2DP and USB v2.0
- Wi-Fi connectivity
- Proximity sensor for screen auto turn-off
- Accelerometer sensor for automatic UI rotation
- Office document viewer
- OVI integration
Bad
- Gets stuck on Flash Enabled Websites
- The body gets lots of scratches within two to three days.
- Slow accelerometer
- USB data cable is extraordinarily small and annoying
- Rough audio jack insertion
- No built-in GPS receiver
- Poor display under sunlight
- Average camera image quality
- Ordinary video recording quality
- The unlock button start getting loose just after a week of usage
Design
Both the microSD and SIM card slots are on the left hand side. The volume rocker and the slider that locks and unlocks the phone screen are on the opposite side, along with the camera shutter. The 3.5mm jack is on the bottom side, with the microUSB and charger ports on either side. The bottom left corner keeps the plastic stylus, which is quite handy, especially in the presence of this small font size of 5530.
Soft buttons, the Call and End keys, and the menu key in the middle, are just under the display. They require a little more push to work than the touchscreen command. Press and hold on the menu key launches the task manager. You can choose to go for another menu, home or stick to the current application.
I think Nokia has stopped taking care of the outer body of its phones. Within two to three days, this phone will have lots of scratches on its body that it will start looking an old phone very soon. No matter how delicately you handle this machine.
Searching is superb
File management system in 5530 or we can say symbian OS is above all. Moving, sending, copying, renaming the files is never an issue. Search any file is extra ordinary, you just have to know a part of its name and the phone will bring it before you all the possible entries with that particular name even the file is in some submenu.
Multimedia
5530 has same earlier music application but the quality of the music has improved. The best thing for music lover is that they can choose the equalizer setting from a list already available options or change it to something according to the taste. Though, the quality of sound is very good but the volume level is somewhat limited for those who like to hear loud music.
In the video domain, the quality is poor. Nokia 5530 has the option of converting your video into its acceptable format through its software but by doing so it compress the video too much and most of the time it starts giving a blurry look with degraded sound. You won’t enjoy your favorite movie on 5530. You can stream videos as well. But in the absence of 3G you won’t be able to do it on move but at home or office you can always do it within in your WLAN range. But one thing, Nokia 5530 has issue with playing movies on the web. It gets stuck most of the time when especially, playing a YouTube movie.
FM Radio is a treat, a very simple and user friendly interface that everyone would appreciate for sure. It can automatically scan and save all the radio station it scans in a particular area. Touching the screen will activate the volume adjuster which is very handy little facility.
While radio is on, station names are displayed across the screen very decently. It also has RDS support and automatic scanning for an alternative frequency.
Camera is not OK
3.2 MP camera is not something to impress with. It has tons of option that user can select in the camera application which is very user friendly. But having a maximum image resolution of 2048×1536 pixels we expected it perform better but the images it shoots are really noisy and you can’t depend on this machine when you want to save your moments, indoor and outdoor as well. It has the LED flash which works with the still and video camera as well but even then the result is below average.
Videos which are captured in MPEG-4 format are somehow compressed in such a way that they do not produce a good quality.
Connectivity and Browsing
There is no 3G in Pakistan and it does not have the option as well so you can’t make use of Nokia’s improved browser while you are on move because you will have to rely on EDGE or GPRS which unfortunately in Pakistan aren’t good enough and pricey as well for the masses.
It has a good connectivity with WLAN where it will not disappoint you. One thing to be taken care of by Nokia people that browser crashes while playing videos most of the times. Secondly you can’t open other applications when you are browsing, it will crash the browser as well. You need to close those applications and then continue with your browsing which is not acceptable.
USB cable is too short in length, with a laptop it may work ok but when you connect it with your desktop, it will hang like a toy. Perhaps Nokia had to keep it that way as it wanted to reduce the cost, ridiculous isn’t it?
Both USB and Bluetooth are version 2.0 and the latter naturally also supports A2DP. Unfortunately, the 5530 doesn’t charge off its microUSB port unlike all other recent Nokia phones. Standard 3.5mm audio jack is a little stiff but works well.
Verdict
Calling , messaging, emailing and music are some of plus points of Nokia 5530 and if you are not too much worried about the camera and you are not an old touch screen user of Samsung Star or S8000 or something from LG who can’t live without a very brisk screen response, Nokia 5330 XpressMusic is for you.
