Nice phone, nasty software!! (Nokia 5510)

Member Name: bell12345

Product:	Nokia 5510
Date:	28/01/02 (1156 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: 64MB MP3 Player and Radio, QWERT keybaord for easier typing, Has a raft of features including Vibration and Voice activated dialling

Disadvantages: Just a little bit bulky, Music software leaves a lot to be desired, Difficult to play games

Well after the constant bombardment of adverts from all angles, I finally gave in and went and bought myself a 5510 on contract, for a reasonably priced £50

I will try and give you a good guide as to what the phone offers and what it gets wrong.

The phone itself
=================

The first impressions was the size of the phone, it’s big but not as big as the adverts seem to portray. Slightly larger than a Nokia 3210 although suprisingly it is slightly lighter. The phone functions in pretty much the same way as most Nokia's do. It has all the usual features. The Text messaging is vastly improved with the inclusion of the QWERTY keyboard. It takes the chore out of typing out long-winded messages. The keyboard does take a little adjusting to though and I still found myself double tapping letters instead as if it was still phone keypad. Thankfully Nokia have removed that awful T9 dictionary, predictive typing would have been a good idea if it was actually useful and if people wrote messages in proper English. The Tones section includes spaces for 7 ringtones, however as in all new Nokia's the composer has been removed. It has all the other usual functions including vibration and voice activated dialling which is something Nokia should improve, as it doesn’t work at all well. The phone also offers a selection of screensavers and WAP access to the Internet, the screen is perhaps a little small for WAP however. Also included is the regular games (available on the 3310), however there is also a new Pinball game called Bumper. The can prove to be a little difficult to play due to the situation of the screen in relation to the keyboard. For me that doesn’t really detract from the phone as a whole as it don’t buy it play games on (I have a PC for that).

MP3 Player & Radio
==================

The MP3 player does basically what you would expect from an MP3 player, the 64MB capacity means that a
good quantity of music can be loaded onto the phone. The controls are simple and easy to use also. It has a graphic equaliser and although it is not outstanding it does what it is supposed to. It’s a step up from my old MP3, which had a tendency to wipe its memory at any given opportunity and strangely had no off button! I was of course quite pleased to also receive in my package a small CD with 4 tracks on including "The Space Between" from the advert by the excellent Dave Matthews Band. Just a little thing but it pleased me.

The Radio is a FM radio, and will allow you to store 10 channels; the sound quality is crisp and the reception good. The only disappointment for me is that the MW band isn’t included it would have been useful for listening to football commentary if it had been

Both these features require the Nokia headset to be connected to the phone for them to function, thankfully this will prevent accidental use of both the MP3 player and Radio while the phone is in your pocket.

Nokia Audio Manager Software
============================

I’m not sure what Nokia were thinking when they wrote this program. Firstly it is ver memory intensive, using 14MB of RAM (more than MS Access!) Secondly it stability leaves a lot to be desired and it is very prone to crashing. Finally it has the extremely annoying problem in that it writes the files in your MP3 library to its own file type (.lse I believe) This would be fine, though the process is far too time consuming even for only 50 or so MP3 files. It also takes up the equivalent disk space again to store these. The software would be much better if it did this process each time you wish to transfer files to the phone.

Conclusion
==========

This is a good phone, perhaps a little on the bulky size but it’s a small price to pay for the features included. The QWERTY keyboard is a breath of fresh air as I’m sure most people
would prefer it to the number pad. Both the MP3 player and the radio are good quality and the fact they are part of phone removes the need to purchase batteries as it can simply be charged. The software is a big let down, poor stability, memory sapping and Hard Drive space grabbing. Nokia need to go back and rethink their Audio Management software thankfully this is a problem that can be fixed and hopefully in the long run will be fixed. It does currently detract a little from the excellent quality of the phone.

I would recommend this phone to anyone, if you aren’t hung up on having a tiny phone or on having a stylish phone and want something functional then but one tomorrow. There are very few phones that can stand up to the Nokia 5510.

Summary: