Not So Good Nokia (Nokia 5510)

Member Name: TUVOK

Product:	Nokia 5510
Date:	28/12/01 (1007 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: 64mb/2 hours mp3 music, Radio with 10 presets, Lithium Battery

Disadvantages: Dreadful, Tedious Software, Bulky, not user friendly, Poor Design

I Bought this phone as it was reduced FROM £99.99 to £49.99 on a BT Cellnet Contract which I initially thought was an excellent buy. I have returned the phone because I was not happy with various Niggles I found.

To start off, I thought this was the Phone for me, more than Just a phone, it has a large capacity 64mb mp3 player built in to allow storage of upto 2 hours of music as well as an FM Radio which will store 10 presets. It also has a lithium battery which means you can charge it anytime with no worry of memory effect. Apart from this it is identical to the Nokia 3330, for those of you who dont know this phone it has predictive text messaging, send long sms messages upto 460 characters, alarm clock, clock, 10 reminders, various ringing tones, wap, vibrate alert, profiles, good games.

The phone comes with an assortment of leads, one is the headset which is very comfy. It doubles up as the handsfree kit as well, with one plug going in the phone for the music and the other for taking calls. If listening to music it will pause when you receive a call. The great thing about this phone is that you can store plenty of mp3 files on the phone which can be downloaded from your pc or the internet using the supplied usb cable which fits into a socket on the side of the phone. There is also a cable for connecting the phone to a cd "line in" socket on the back of a cd player to copy music to the phone. The other cable is a headphone adapter so that you can use any headphones.

The software which comes with the phone is Nokia Audio Manager version 2, 2001. I found this to be TEDIOUSLY SLOW in organising files to copy to the phone, it crashed my computer more than once, even after doing a clean reinstall it was still frustratingly slow. Just scrolling down a list of 30 mp3 files on my PC it took an age - absolutely dreadful and this put me off straight away. I have not known a worse piece of software- I think this is poor softwar
e design by Nokia rather than my PC, I had more than the minimum requirements and I have never had problems like this before with ANY software I have used.
Actually downloading files from PC to phone was fairly quick it was just navigating the files which was ridiculously slow. The length of the phone was not bad,138 mm, its actually quite small compared to the pictures that are shown of it. Width is 58mm which is almost 6cm-wide and bulky. Its quite thick too at 28mm and weighs 155 grams, similar to a Nokia 3210, not a problem, the problems are the awful software and the fact that you have to use both hands to type a text message using a qwerty keypad which is a good idea in practice and fine if you are a touch typist, but for those used to a normal keypad using T9 its a lot slower and a poor substitute. The keys are slightly smaller than those found on a 3310/3330, and There is no T9 on the phone.

Another niggle is that the music volume keys are situated on the side and not the front of the phone making it awkward to access them. If they had put them on the front it would have been far easier to control. They are not lit up so if in the dark you will have trouble seeing them.

The battery cover is a bit of a nightmare too, even the assistant in the carphone warehouse could not get it back on! I had to do it but its very awkward, much worse than a 3310/3330 which some people find awkward.

The other phone/mp3 currently avaialble is the Siemens sl45 which is small light and can be upgraded from 32 to 128mb of memory, I would say this is a better buy although it will cost in the region of £100-£130 on contract it is a proven quality piece of equipment.

All in all a good idea and the music quality is very good on the mp3 and the radio, but it is let down by terribly slow software, poor ergonomics/usability and is bulky. Only buy if you love your music and dont mind these niggles. I would say that if Nokia redesign the software,
get rid of the horrible keypad and make it smaller, lighter and more like a proper mobile then it will be a best seller in the future.

Summary: