Nokia 5230 Review: Full specifications and more

Nokia 5230 is a s60v5 (symbian^1) touchscreen phone from Nokia. A very good phone with a very low price. We could say that 5230 is a downgraded version of 5800 Xpress Music. They look pretty much alike.

5230 is the first s60v5 and touchscreen phone that I had ever used. And its really a great phone! All the stuffs that you need from a phone are in 5230. A high-speed connection, a camera, send/receive e-mail, great games and applications, massive storage memory, a good video and audio player, call and text, etc...

After 2 months of using this phone, I decided to create this review so I could share to you how good this cheap phone is.

The Specs:

Network: GSM, EDGE, UMTS (3G/3.5G)

Screen: 320x640 resolution, 3.2" TFT resistive touchscreen w/ 16Million colors and a widescreen format (16:9 aspect ratio)

Memory: 70MB Internal storage memory, 128MB RAM, upto 16GB microSD flash memory storage

Entertainment: stereo FM radio, visual radio, MP4/H.264/H.263/WMV video player, MP3/WAV/eAAC+/WMA music player

Camera: 2MP still camera, 640x480 @30fps video camera

Connectivity: Bluetooth 2.0 w/ A2DP, 3.5mm AV jack, microUSB 2.0, GPS w/ A-GPS support

Processor: ARM 11 434MHz processor

Battery: BL-5J Li-Ion 1320mAh battery

Talk time: 7Hrs (2G), 4.5Hrs (3G)

Standby: 432Hrs

Misc: accelerometer for auto rotate, proximity sensor for auto off

Pros:

Price to Quality Ratio

- 5230 is one of the best phones in the market in terms of price to quality ratio. A phone with those kind of specs (read the specs above) at a price ranging from $140 to $170 (Php6.8k-8.2k), it may be the best bargain available in the market today! This phone is really great for those low budget people. You can now own a high tech phone and look good without spending a lot of money.

Great for movie/video lovers!

- With a 3.2", 16:9 widescreen display, 5230 is really a great phone for watching movies. The phone can play DVD quality movies (640x480 @30fps). So you don't have to resize your DVD movies, just convert it and its ready to go! 5230 can't play HD videos (720p or 1080p). But who cares? Why would you try to play a 1920x1080 clip in a 640x320 display if it will not affect your viewing experience? At first, you will think that a 1080p video will be clearer and brighter than a 480p clip. Yes this is true. But it is only applicable for high resolution display. The resolution of the phone is fix. Meaning, your 1080p video will just be displayed as a 640x320 clip. So there will be no difference at all. You will just be wasting your disk space for those HD vids. The default video player (RealPlayer) of the phone has a good feature of stretching videos. Your 4:3 video, or low quality video will be stretched when played, filling the whole screen with moving images and removing those annoying black spaces due to the resolution disparity of the video and the display. So it's really fun to watch movies with this phone.

Accelerometer equals more fun!

- Accelerometer is really not a necessity. But it gives the user additional reason to love this phone. It's really fun to watch your menu automatically rotate every time you flip your phone from portrait to landscape position. There are also a lot of accelerometer based games for s60v5 phones. Like Raging Thunder. An interactive 3D racing game that lets you feel like you're really driving the car! You can drive the car left or right by just twisting your phone left and right. It’s pretty difficult to control the car, but I enjoy it. I feel like I'm using a real steering wheel to drive the car!

High speed internet connection

- The phone has 3.5G connectivity. Also known as HSDPA with a max speed of 3.6Mbps (450KBps). This phone is even faster than the basic broadband connection (only upto 384Kbps) that we are using in our home. Because of this connection speed, streaming youtube videos and downloading big files is not a problem.

Cons:

Finger burning text input method

- This is the worst part of using 5230, the extremely difficult text input method. The phone has three input systems, a T9 virtual keypad, a full QWERTY virtual keyboard and a hand writing recognition system. Among the three input systems, the T9 virtual keypad is the easiest to use. Hmm.. maybe "easiest" is not the right term to use. "least difficult" is a better fit. All the three methods are difficult to use. Even my slim fingers are having a hard time typing text using both T9 and QWERTY virtual keys. I always hit the keys that I don't suppose to press. Example, instead of typing the word "meeting", most of the time I mistakenly typed it as "mooting". Instead of pressing "3" four times so I can input two "e", my fingers are hitting the "6" when using the T9 keys. The QWERTY keyboard is even harder to use. Since the keys are laded out smaller than those of T9. Using stylus instead of fingers is not a bad idea. It will lessen your errors, but it will also decrease your typing speed. The handwriting recognition system is also difficult to use. The phone cannot distinguish which is a letter, a symbol or a number. So you must check first the number mode if you want to write a number, and the symbol mode to input symbols. This is really bad. Especially if you will consider the handwriting recognition system of other touchscreen phones that can directly determine if you are writing a letter, number or symbol. Another issue of the handwriting recognition of the 5230 is its slow response. There is a split second delay before it display what you are writing. This problem causes you to lose your rhythm in writing. Maybe its better if Nokia put a real keypad on 5230 just like N97.

Camera issues

- 5230 has a 2MP still camera. A 2MP camera is not bad, but based on the trends today, people are expecting a higher resolution camera from their phones. The bigger issue for its camera is its lack of flash. The phone doesn’t have any kind of flash for its camera. Without flash, users are limited only to capture pictures in bright well litted areas. The phone's camera is useless during the night or in dark places. This is not the phone for you if you love taking pictures in an evening party. Another camera issue for this phone is that, it doesn’t have a secondary camera. You cannot make video calls with this phone, or make it as your mirror.

No Wi-Fi

- You can use this phone to browse the internet even without wi-fi. It can load the pages very fast with its HSDPA connection. But surfing the net with the use of wi-fi is still different. First of all, surfing with wi-fi connection is absolutely free! No data charges and its available almost anywhere. 3.5G connection is maybe faster than the wi-fi connection available in your area. But it can cost you a lot.

Soft speaker volume

- The phone has only one loudspeaker (I tell you, it's not really loud) placed on its left side. It can produce 3D audio effect. But its output sound is really soft. Your metal song will sounds like a mellow song when played through the phone's speaker. I compare it with my N70; 5230's speaker is maybe just 70% of the power of my N70's speaker.

The Verdict:

If I am going to grade this phone from 1 to 10, 10 being the highest, I will give it a passing score of 7. The phone may lack some in demand features, but I tell you, everything an average user need, is in this phone. No need to spend extra pennies for those features that are really not so important.

I highly recommend this phone for those money deficient guys like me. You will surely enjoy every cent that you spent to buy this phone. 5230 is a straight forward phone. It will directly cater your mobile needs without those extra nonsense stuffs.

But if you are a wealthy person, it is better to buy a higher end touchscreen phone. Like N97, X6, or even N8. They have more features than what 5230 have. These extra features are really fun to use. Maybe not a necessary one, but it’s good to enjoy what our current technology can bring to us.