| Product: |
Nokia 5300 XpressMusic |
| Date: |
09.04.08 (90 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Easy to use, good sound
Disadvantages: Not very good camera
I bought this phone from Phones4U. I am a self confessed fashion misfit when it comes to phones, so had really only a few things on my wishlist: Must be able to record (my terrible saxophone playing), must be able to download my own music for ringtones, must be under £100. At £69, which incluede a £10 top up, I reckon I got a bargain, especially as this model is for sale on the Nokia site for £130.
The staff member (I think he was about 12) was very helpful and told me that this phone could do all of those things, I asked about directly downloading from itunes and he assured me that I could, the only lie or misinformation that he told.
The phone itself is a 'slide' design which is pretty nice, i have always had 'clams' before. The design is pretty cool, robust, big rubber edges on a relatively small phone. The menu which comes up in crisp bright clours is very easy to work out (I did it) and the phone is very changeable in terms of themes, wallpapers, ringtones etc. All the 'specs' for supported formats are listed below so I wont bother you with my explanations when you can read that. The buttons are nicely black with a deep blue backlight which is not too bright but does the job well. The face as you can see from the picture features a pretty big screen which is cool for phot's etc. though I worry slightly at how quickly it will get all scratched up. Note to self, buy a case.
There is a camera and video facility, which is not the best at 1.3 Mpixel, but hey I never bought it for that. I bought for the sound and music capabilities. There is a ready loaded memory card of 285MB, which is small compared to an ipod, but still allows a fair amount of tunes, this is of course upgradeable at a cost. Some areas/shops have bigger preloaded memory cards but you pays ya money and takes ya choice.
The Music capabilities are pretty fab, there are a fair few supported formats (see below) and as many ways to download, Bluetooth, PC cable (supplied), and so on, in fact the CD that comes with the phone which loads Nokia PC Suite to your computer is worth the price alone, there is an auto convert function which converts tracks to an appropriate format and simply press 'copy to phone'. I could not work out how to get tracks directly from my itunes library, despite spending hours on it, so i settled for making a CD of the tracks I wanted and it was plain sailing from there. You can then load the tracks into the music player, ringtones, texttones etc. I have 'message to you rudy' for texts, lol. The music player itself is loud enough and very easy to use with nice tactile rubber buttons on the side of the phone, as well as a central menu button where you control features. The sound is as good as one would expect from a mobile, probably better than I expected in fact, very loud as ringtones, need turning down from presets, unless you want to upset folk.
There are many features such as games preloaded, I particularly like the 'smileys' that attach to texts. there are things that i have not used yet such as 'push to talk' which is a way of connecting to another phone, a bit like having walky talkies. Nor have I used the organiser which I have navigated around and it is pretty comprehensive, apparantly one can even download maps to the phone.
Summary:
For under £70, there is a phone, an organiser, Bluetooth, musicplayer, camera, video.......and the acid test is that my 13 year old son told me it was cool and some of his friends had the same model.
In terms of the downside, I was a bit upset that I could not figure out how to download directly from my itunes library, and the battery life is okay until you start messing with the functions such as music player then it drains pretty quick. Would I reccomend it?, hell yes, it's mys first new phone for over two years and I am gobsmaked with it.
All the 'tecchie spec's are available, directly from the Nokia site for those interested:
http://www.nokia.co.uk/search4/index. jsp?wsid=207&charset=UTF-8&qt=5300
Summary: Music phone
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