A good phone overall (Nokia 5000)

Member Name: seyroha

Product:	Nokia 5000
Date:	07/03/09 (68 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Style, build quality, screen, tried and tested nokia software

Disadvantages: Camera quality, no memory slot

The Nokia 5000's design is undoubtedly attractive and stylish. The 3-colour scheme used by the case works really well, but the best iconic lime green colour is still exclusive to T-mobile I believe. I've been using my 5000 for a few months now and the quality of the case seems very good, and none of the green paint has scratched off as I initially worried it might.

The 5000 actually looks very similar to the 5310 expressmusic also made by Nokia and sold for about £30 more. The 5310 has some extra features like a memory card slot, better (2MP) camera, and music playback keys.

One of the best features of the phone is the large, clear screen. It's bright and has a 320x240 resolution so everything displayed is very clear. Viewing the main menu and text message inbox makes use of the extra screen area and resolution to display more text on the screen at a time. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a way to do this when sending texts though.

The menus themselves are intuitive to navigate and use, as always for Nokia phones. The included FM radio is also a nice feature and more useful to me than the "games" they include these days (whatever happened to simple entertainment like Snake 2?!). And for those people who love to walk around blasting music, it also plays radio through the speaker, although you still need headphones connected ("as an aerial", apparently) for that to work.

The included camera is only 1.3megapixel and the quality isn't fantastic, especially compared to many recent phones. It does an acceptable job (for a 1.3MP phone camera) outside, but struggles a lot in low light. Photos will probably be OK for a picture message, but I wouldn't really want to try printing them.

The lack of memory in the phone is probably one of its most serious disappointments. It has only 10MB-or-so free, which is enough for a just two or three songs (odd considering Nokia includes a full mp3 player function) or several photos.

The phone also seems to struggle handling large images, possibly down to the high screen resolution or the lack of memory again. For example, if you set a 1.3MP camera photo as your wallpaper, the whole menu system on the phone slows down noticably, yet with the included Nokia wallpapers, it runs fine. Fortunately, the Nokia wallpapers are nice enough that I can cope with this.

Overall, this is a decent phone, it's just a shame it feels like it's been deliberately crippled (poor camera, no memory card) to make sure people still buy the almost identical-looking 5310 expressmusic at a higher price.

Summary: If you can live with the missing features, definitely consider it.

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