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Musical Xpress

Nokia’s quirky 5300 XpressMusic phone provides thumping tunes without bashing your wallet or stretching your pocket.

For all the mobiles out there that can play digital music, if you really want a device that can double as a dedicated music player, your search isconfined to a small (but growing) selection of specialist music phones.

The Nokia 5300, with its dedicated music keys, boxed music software and free 256MB microSD card, aspires to be such a handset and, along with the 5200, forms Nokia’s growing XpressMusic range of phones.

But, while it’s certainly packaged and promoted as a handset for music lovers, does it have the technological talent to be considered alongside the top Sony Ericsson Walkman or Nokia Nseries phones? Or is the 5300 simply a natty little handset that can carry a tune?

When reviewing a phone which boasts a certain killer feature or application, we are often presented with the dilemma of measuring form versus function. For example, there is no doubt that the new 8GB-endowed Nokia N91 is a hugely capable music device with impressive storage space. However, it is also very bulky by modern mobile standards, which will put many people off. The same could be said of the Sony Ericsson Walkman W950i, which excels as a music player, but struggles as a phone and is also a little larger than your average mobile.

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The same could be said of the Sony Ericsson Walkman W950i, which excels as a music player, but struggles as a phone and is also a little larger than your average mobile.

Bulk is certainly not an issue with the Nokia 5300, which is a very compact handset and just weighty enough to feel robust. However, appreciation of the phone’s design will probably depend on your age. The two-tone colour scheme (it comes in red and white or black and white) certainly has youth appeal.

And, while it makes a refreshing alternative to the chrome or black handsets out there, the appeal of brightly coloured technology is usually limited to teens and zany types. After all, how many of you would choose a red hi-fi or TV in your front room?

Unusually, Nokia’s 5300 is a slider phone – a form factor now perfected by Samsung, but often overlooked by the Finnish manufacturer.

The phone features a spring-loaded slide mechanism which zips open and shut with a satisfying click. The design allows plenty of room for a decent-sized screen, four soft keys and a neat, if fiddly, joypad. Slide the phone open and you reveal a roomy keypad.

Volume control keys and a dedicated camera key can be found on the right-hand side of the phone, while the dedicated music keys are positioned immediately to the left of the phone’s display.

 

Looking purely at the 5300’s musical merits, it has some obvious strengths and weaknesses when compared to, say, the Walkman W950i and W850i or the Nokia Nseries handsets. As an EDGE phone, downloading a track or album on the 5300 will take longer than it does with its 3G-enabled contemporaries. Neither can it match the built-in memory of the Sony Ericsson W950i or Nokia N91, although you can bolster the memory with a 2GB microSD card (available separately) which can store up to 1,500 songs. So, really, it competes with all but the mobile music juggernauts.

The 5300’s music player supports MP3, Midi, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+ and WMA formats, which is a comprehensive selection and trumps both the iPod and the Walkman range, neither of which can play Microsoft’s WMA files.
You can download music direct from the internet via the operator’s online portal, or transfer music files to the phone using the Nokia Audio Manager application, which is part of the Nokia PC suite. The 5300 comes boxed with an XpressMusic CD-ROM which carries the latest downloadable version of the PC suite.

Any music files you have stored on the phone’s memory or the memory card will automatically be added to the music library each time you start up your 5300. The music library on the 5300 is divided into sub-categories including Artists, Albums, Genres, Composers and Track Lists and to update the library you simply select Update Library. All tracks generated by the Music Manager software are found under the Track Lists sub-menu.

Music quality is clean and clear, even in speakerphone mode. Unfortunately, we were forced to endure booming speakerphone mode more often than we would have liked because of a faulty headset connection, which meant the plug-in headphones only worked sporadically. When they failed, the 5300 would present us with the message: ‘Enhancement not supported.’

Fortunately, the 5300 comes with a universal headphone adapter, enabling you to use the phone with a wide variety of 3.5mm headphones. On our handset’s performance, we’d recommend that you do just that.

Assuming you get a headset connection, the music player features a media equaliser that lets you play tracks in Normal, Pop, Rock, Jazz or Classical mode. You can also set a chosen music track as a ringtone and stream your music wirelessly using Bluetooth music speakers (sold separately). There’s also a built-in FM radio in case you fancy listening to someone else’s music collection.

Aside from the music, the Nokia 5300 is a pretty rounded Symbian Series 40 phone with decent features. There’s a run-of-the-mill 1.3-megapixel camera on board, a video recorder and video player, as well as a sharp 262,000-colour display, Push-To-Talk and Instant Messaging with Presence.
We also found a great game pre-installed on the memory card. Pro Snowboard is a game where you perform stunts on the piste for points. It manages to mix simple gameplay with intuitive controls and good graphics. It kept us hooked for a week as there are enough levels to keep you going back for more.

Ultimately, the 5300 is a good all-round mobile and a simple and capable music phone. It’s not an iPod slayer, but it’s no dud either.