Nokia 5300  

The 5300 looks nice, is designed to play music, packs lots of features, and is affordable. Is it too good to be true?

It is obvious that the phone is designed for playing music because they are dedicated buttons for forward, rewind, play, pause and volume control. 

It takes only a touch of a button to get the music playing and to switch tracks – all the buttons are located on the sides of the phone and within easy reach of your fingers as you hold the phone.  

The buttons are rather hard to press but I am told that it is intentionally done this way to prevent accidental pressing of buttons when the phone is in your pocket. 

The speakers are really good and it has to be one of the loudest I have heard so far, and it still sounds good even when the volume is pushed to the maximum. 

The two games, Flying Finger and Music Guess, which come with the handphone should appeal to music fans. 

Flying Finger is similar to the arcade dance games and requires you to press the keys to the tune of the music being played, and I found it to be very entertaining and addictive. 

Music Guess was not as fun because it only required me to guess the tune that the game played. And since it can only play the songs stored in the phone there was not much of a challenge for me. 

Other functions 

The 1.3-megapixel built-in camera takes good pictures when the lighting is adequatebut I would have preferred at least a2-megapixel camera.  

The quality suffered even more when I shot videos as it turned out very grainy. However, the phone records sounds very well.  

Also, I was able to switch between camera and video mode by just pressing the navigation keys which I found very handy. 

The phone is made of a rubber-like material, which is rather nice to hold but smudges easily. Because it is white (with red stripes) it is going to take a lot of effort to keep it clean.  

The phone is also rather fat but this is only expected because it is a slider phone.  

The 5300 slides out very smoothly and underneath is a well-designed keypad. Sending text messages from the phone was easy, as the keys were not cramped.  

The phone is not without imperfections and my biggest complaint is the battery compartment which is very difficult and tricky to access. 

To make matters worse, you have to remove the battery cover and the battery to gain access to the MicroSD memory slot. 

And if you are serious about playing songs, you definitely have to use a MicroSD card as the built-in 32MB is only good enough for installing games and apps. 

But I have no complaint about the battery itself because it lasted up to four days on a single charge even when I used the phone for recording, voice calls, listening to music and playing games. 

Verdict 

There is a lot to like about the 5300, as it is well-designed (with the exception of the battery cover) and it packs enough features. 

And as a music phone it is great – the dedicated buttons are just in the right place, the speakers are good and really loud, and the software is easy to use. 

I wish it was a 3G phone but with the meagre services being offered at the moment, you are not going to miss it that much.  

If you are looking for a music phone and are on a limited budget then the Nokia 5300 Xpress Music is definitely worth checking out. There are a lot of features in the phone and the retail price of RM1,099 is reasonable.  

Pros: Dedicated buttons for playing music; nice design; excellent battery life 

Cons: Low resolution camera; battery compartment and memory slot not easily accessible.