At A Glance:

In the box
- Nokia Xpressmusic 5320
- MicroUSB cable
- 3.5mm Headphones
- Nokia charger

Nokia’s Xpressmusic 5320 is a multimedia phone, with music specifically is its focus. It has a simple design wrapped in a HSDPA package. Let’s see what’s in store.

Design
The candybar design isn’t particularly interesting, but it does carry a certain charm in its simplicity. It is clearly targeted at the younger audience, with its somewhat sportier colours and quick-fire design. The first thing you will notice is the little dimples on the phone that we assume is to prevent the phone from slipping from your hands. Its all- plastic exterior is built for rough and tumble situations.

Nokia 5320 is fitted with a 2-inch 16 million-colour TFT LCD display of QVGA resolution. It is obvious we won't sing praises of its screen size. After all, 2-inch displays belong below and seeing one in what's not exactly a budget handset is a bit upsetting. At 90g, the phone is light and easy to carry around. Sunlight legibility decks out at about average, under direct sunlight the screen still functions but it’s not that clear.

The keypad’s design looks a little radical, but performs pretty normal. The phone’s D-pad is easier to use than most, with the navigation and enter button separated from each other.

The phone’s music functions has a ‘wrap-around’ design on the 5320, with the play/pause and forward buttons on the left spine which you can access your music quickly. And the volume rocker on the right. The music keys are very intuitive; our index finger accesses the music keys and our thumb on the volume rocker-works for lefties too. There is an additional music button above the screen, clicking it brings up the music player menu.

The speakers of the 5320 are minimalist in nature, with a small gap between the front and back cover.

The microSD slot is placed here, and Nokia threw in a 1GB microSD card. The quick camera button is located on the right. Pop open the rear cover and you’ll see the battery pack which covers up the microSD slot.

Features
The Symbian 9.3 OS with S60 powers the 5320, and it’s relatively unchanged from earlier version. There are some improvements with the S60 feature pack 2, notably the ability to customise your home screen. Nokia contact list is still a joy to use, and we like to note that the mark/unmark function is real plus.

Nokia 5320 features Real player for playing your video clips. The video player can be displayed in both normal and fullscreen modes. When in full screen, the softkey functions are hidden so that they don't spoil the viewing experience and only pop up when a key is pressed. With the smallish screen in mind however, you shouldn't be too demanding.

The FM radio on Nokia 5320 has a nice simple interface and can automatically scan and save the available stations in your area. RDS support is included and the Visual radio is also on-board.

The 5320 has quite a low battery lifespan, expect daily recharges if you are heavy user. Text and call functions are a noticeable drain. Meanwhile, the music player will probably last you a day at most.

Music Player
The S60 music player platform is good and but not exceptional, you can still scroll through and sort your music with ease. Expect the usual fares from Nokia’s music player -sorting, adding and creating new playlist are all a breeze to do. Audio quality frankly isn’t all that impressive being a music phone and all. Audio turns into a blaring mesh when we turned up our music to a 100% on the speakers. Audio quality is much better on the 3.5mm headphones, and has a good audio output.

Connectivity
The 5320 sports a large variety of connectivity options, with quad-band functionality (850 /900 /1800 /1900 MHz) with HSDPA 3.6Mbps, EDGE, GPRS, and Bluetooth 2.0. For a low-mid range phone, this baby has quite a lot to offer.

Camera
The 5320 has a 2.0 megapixel camera that comes with a LED flash, no auto-focus, nor lens protection. The LED flash comes as soft addition and can hardly convince us that photography was taken seriously in the 5320.

The camera user interface is simple, the sequence and scene modes are all there. There is a really nice panorama mode where the handset can easily make panorama shots with excellent stitching. However this panorama mode produces photos of too low resolution, which are only suitable for viewing on the phone screen.

Verdict
The Nokia 5320 XpressMusic serves it purpose as a dedicated music device, at RM 888, it stands as a mid-range handset. Audio quality isn’t the best, but we can’t really complain- it performs above average. The design is youthful, but it definitely won’t attract any serious users.

The inclusion of the HSDPA, gives the phone a little bit more flavour and value for money. The lack of Wi-Fi however is still a downer and so is the smallish display. Also, the phone’s battery life is a bit underwhelming, seeing as how enjoying music is a burden on the batteries.

All in all, we recommend it as an entry level device, because of it ease of use and a dash of everything in it. Despite a few minor flaws, we still think most of the features are well though out and fits the phone.

• Tags : Nokia 5320 XpressMusic