Being part of the revamped XpressMusic line, the Nokia 5300 is expressive more than ever and is one great example of how you can have fun with your mobile phone. The dedicated music keys make a sure statement about the music-orientation of the handset. And if that is not enough you can always count on the 1.3 megapixel camera to capture your precious moments and view them on the TFT display with QVGA resolution. Connectivity is at its highest here, since the new Finnish music slider is armed with a mini-USB jack, a standard 3.5mm audio jack and even with stereo Bluetooth support. If the price is right, it really sounds like a good bargain, right? Well, you are not far from the truth.
Appearance and design
Dimension: 92.4 x 48.2 x 20.7 mm; weight: 106.2 g
At first glance you might think there's nothing cutting edge about the Nokia 5300's design. Yes, it's a bit boxy and a little bulky (92.4 x 48.2 x 20.7 mm), but it's lighter than it looks (106.2g), and ultimately it's a form factor that deserves closer inspection. First off, the 5300 Xpress Music is a slider phone. The slider mechanism slides up and down with one hand, yet it is sturdy enough to feel comfortable in the hand. The phone itself is a small one so it feels somewhat top-heavy when the slider is up.
The Nokia 5300 is offered only in matt white color with a choice of two trimmings - red and dark grey. The trimmings in fact include only the central frame surrounding the display which incorporates the dedicated side multimedia keys.
The retail package of Nokia 5300 should include a Nokia stereo headset HS-47, a standard 3.5 mm audio jack adapter and a microSD card with a size that would vary according to the region.
Keypad
Two soft-keys are mounted beneath the screen; the four-way navigation key incorporates OK key – this button exposes considerable gaps, which might get filled up with dust in time, but I doubt it will cause much of a problem. Next to the right key one will find the microphone’s hole – as a matter of fact, it is placed there to allows answering a call without sliding the 5300 open.
The keypad of the 5300 proved extremely comfortable to work with and SMS-fans would be more than pleased with it. But my impression is that the comfortable keypad is something usual for recent mobiles in the slider form factor. Yet I greatly appreciated the positive feedback of the large keys, which are especially comfortable for people with large fingers. The same holds true for the navigation D-pad as well which is far better than most of the Sony Ericsson solutions. It reacts to the finger press instantly and sinks in the pressed direction smoothly with almost no resistance.
The keypad has an even blue backlighting and makes a very nice impression. Display
TFT, 240х320, 260 K colors
The model boasts a QVGA screen (240x320 pixels, 31x42 mm), capable of displaying up to 262 K colors (TFT). All in all the 5300’s display does quite well and provides fair color depth and vivid picture. In the sense of picture quality, it somewhat reminds of that found on Nokia 6233, but yields to Nokia 6131’s screen. For the class Nokia 5300 comes from, the display performs on acceptable level. Even though it fades in the sun, information doesn’t slip away. Depending on picked font size and active application, the display can house up to 9 text lines (there may be more) and up to 3 service lines.
Camera
1280 x 1024 (1.3 Mp), Video, 8x ZOOm
The 5300 has an first-rate 1.3-megapixel camera that takes JPEG pictures in six resolutions: 1,280x1,024; 1,290x960; 800x600; 640x480; 320x240; and 160x120. You get a variety of camera settings including three quality modes, five color effects, a note mode, a 10-second self-timer, a sequence mode for shooting three photos in rapid succession, adjustable white balance, and an 8X zoom. The only thing missing is a brightness setting.
Besides all that, the camera offers several image effects such as False colors, Sepia, Grey scale, Negative, and Solarise.
The night mode in fact comes in quite handy when taking pictures in poor light conditions. In such conditions the pictures taken in Normal shooting mode have a lot of color noise. The Night mode improves the pictures a lot and I find it useful here.
Additional buttons
On the left side of the display, you can see the designations of the dedicated music keys. Those keys in fact are positioned on the phone's side and are covered with rubber while in the same time they are marked with small buds. The grey frame around the display is made out of plastic and only the keys themselves are covered with rubber.
The right side of the handset incorporates the two volume keys and the camera shutter key. Those keys are also covered with rubber. Besides controlling the volume levels, the volume keys have some other predefined functions. A longer press on the Minus key activates the voice dialing, while a longer press on the Plus key lists the Push-to-talk contacts. It's worth mentioning that you can also activate the voice dialing by a longer press on the green soft key on the front panel - it's up to your choice. The Plus key's secondary function works also when you are browsing the menu, while the Minus key and the Camera release key don't - you have to be in standby mode to use those.
Sizes, Ports and Slots
On the lower portion of the phone's body, you can see the 2.5 mm audio jack (you need the supplied adapter to go to 3.5 mm).
Having a look on top of the phone reveals the 5-pin miniUSB port, the charging port and the On/Off button.
Next to the camera release button you can find the Infrared port.
The memory card slot is located under the back panel cover too just beside the hologram Nokia sticker on the battery. The SIM card bed is located besides the camera lens and the card itself gets locked by a special latch, which makes putting it in or taking it out very easy.
Menu
The main menu is a 3x4 icon screen by default, though you may switch that to a list or a tab based view. The built in themes are all reasonably attractive, and this time the icons and icon animations have been updated. You can of course download or create your own themes. I am happy to say that full screen wallpapers are supported on S40, unlike S60 devices.
Apart from the layout out and the icons on Active Standby, users can also customize a "Go To" menu. This is another list-based menu that can be called up with the left soft key from the standby screen. If you choose not to use the Active Standby feature, you can set all four directions of the d-pad as shortcuts to applications.
The 5300 runs on the 3rd edition of Nokia's S40 user interface, and compared to earlier devices such as the 6233, the system on the 5300 is only slightly updated. The most striking improvements would be the completely redesigned Music Player interface, and the native support of A2DP, OMA DRM2, and Flash Lite 2. You can now also set Flash files and video files as wallpapers.
There's a lot to talk about when it comes to the 5300's features, but we'll get the basics out of the way first. There's a large 1,000-contact phone book with room in each entry for five phone numbers plus a PTT number, e-mail and Web addresses, a job title and a company name, work and home street addresses, a birth date, a nickname, a formal name, and notes (the SIM card holds an additional 250 names). You can organize callers into groups or pair them with a photo for caller ID purposes. For a music phone, the choice of polyphonic ring tones was small--you get just 10, 64-chord tones--but they're assignable to contacts as well. Other standard offerings include a vibrate mode, text and multimedia messaging, a voice recorder, e-mail and instant messaging, an alarm clock, a calendar, a to-do list, a notepad, a calculator, a countdown timer, and a stopwatch.
The main feature is Player. It can play in the background and while doing that it would scroll the current track artist and title on the Active stand-by screen. Once it is in the background you can control it with the dedicated side music keys. In the meantime you can start a java application such as a game and enjoy it while listening to music. Turning the camera on pauses the player though.
The supported file types are AAC, AAC+, eAAC, eAAC+, MP3, MP4, WMA, and AMR. The Nokia player allows you to filter available music tracks by Artist, Album, Genre and Composer. Beside that, you can create your own playlists or use the built-in playlist filters such as Favorites, Most played, Recent tracks or Recent additions
Imaging
1.3 Megapixel Camera
8 x Digital Zoom
Photo Effects
Camera Mode
Video Recorder
Video Player
Landscape Mode
Animated Wallpapers & Screensavers
Coloured Themes
Messaging
SMS (Text Messaging)
MMS (Multimedia Messaging)
Audio Messaging
Instant Messaging
Predictive Text
Sound
Music Player (MP3, MIDI, AAC, AAC+, Enhanced AAC+ & WMA)
Dedicated Music Keys (Play, Pause, Forward & Rewind)
FM Radio
Ringtones (MP3, Video, True Tones, Midi & Polyphonic)
Voice Commands
Integrated Handsfree Speaker
Voice Recorder
Entertainment
Java™ Games
Downloadable Games
Organiser
Alarm clock
Reminders
Stopwatch
Countdown timer
Calculator
Calendar
Notes
Phonebook
Connectivity
Bluetooth™
USB
Infra Red
Network
Tri Band (GSM 900, GSM 1800 & GSM 1900)
Internet
XHTML
HSCSD/CSD
GPRS
Memory & Talk Time
5 Mbytes Internal Memory Plus MicroSD™ Memory Card
3.2 Hours Talk Time
223 Hours Standby
Weight & Size
106.5 g
92.4 x 48.2 x 20.7 mm
Pluses
Nice sliding action
Dedicated music buttons
Good battery life
Minuses
Camera quality
No camera LED flash
Memory slot not easily accessible
Conclusion
The Nokia 5300 is a well-designed, user-friendly music cell phone that offers an amazing range of features backed up by outstanding performance.
Unfortunately it’s not a 3G phone but with the meagre services being offered at the moment, you are not going to miss it that much. If you are looking for a music phone and are on a limited budget then the Nokia 5300 Xpress Music is definitely worth checking out. There are a lot of features in the phone and the retail price of RM1,099 is reasonable.
