Thread: Meets High Expectationsswith Nokia 5320 Express Mobile Phone

A Bold Attempt Nokia phones have always been known for their retro looks. With the 5320, the company has continued its commitment to stocky phones, but has added zing to its overall style. Targeted at the youth, the phone's exteriors are made of plastic. TIle handset that we got for review had a black and blue combination. The back panel has a 2.0-megapixel camera with flash. The top and the bottom of the back pancl are dimpled, which makes it easy to hold.
Above the 2-inch display is the secondary camera on the left and 'My Key' - an instant access key to any function of the phone that can be defined by the user. Below the screen is the D-pad flanked by well-sized short keys and calling keys.
However, the menu and clear keys are lit¬tle uncomfortable to use, as they are small. The keypad is hard and unconventional. Instead of horizontal separators, the keys have been divided in a very different manner and users might take some time to get used to them. The 2-inch display seems a bit small but in the standby mode some icons are displayed in a horizontal row for quick access. TIle Nokia 5320's front and back panels are black and a textured blue band runs around the corners. TIle D-pad has a blue outline. The slot for the microSD card is very difficult to Open.



Music Express , With the XpressMusic tag, the Nokia 5320 has very large shoes to fill in and to an extent it did meet our expectations. However, the experience was not mind blowing. The music player supports all major music formats. The sound quality in the loudspeaker mode is good and pretty pleasing in the headset mode. The dedicated music keys make handling of songs pret¬ty easy. The songs can be sorted in the usual manner of artists, albums and com¬posers. The device has five equaliser presets, which can be edited. We were also able to create a new one. However, the default preset cannot be edited. Other music setting options include the usual stereo widening and loudness. The phone has an inter¬esting feature called 'Say and Play'. This gets activated by long pressing the 'My Key'. Users have to speak the title or artist of the track. The phone searches it and then plays it. However, in a noisy environment like Delhi's Metro rail, this feature was not very receptive. Since the phone does not have Hindi support it does not recognise Hindi songs. An XpressMusic phone will be incomplete without FM radio. Users can store up to 50 FM channels and it has RDS support along with the visual radio feature. However, the handset doesn't have the FM record or alarm options. The radio's reception is good even in areas where other phones' reception dwindled. The Nokia 5320 also has a Real Player for playing video clips, which can also be played in full screen mode but with a screen of this size, the experience is not very good.

Camera Calling Since the phone's focus is music, we didn't expect much on the imaging front. The Nokia 5320 has a 2.0-megapixel camera with an LED flash. The highest resolution can be set at 1600 x 1200 pixels. Other options include sequence, night, selt~timer and panorama mode. The pho¬tos shot outdoors are good. Those clicked inside with flash give acceptable results.

Office Apps Apart from the multimedia portfolio, the Nokia 5320 has some good applications as well. Widsets and Yahoo Go' are preloaded on the phone along with QyickOffice. When we tried to access QyickOffice, it prompted us to buy a licence. The handset also has maps and can be connected with an external GPS device. It has an Adobe PDF reader and Zip manager along with a dictionary. Setting up an e-mail account is simple. Interbrowsing is convenient. The N¬gage platform is pre-loaded on the phone.

Alternatively The Nokia 5320 XpressMusic costs Rs 10,200. Other phones that can be considered are the Sony Ericsson WSlOi for Rs 9,750 and the new Nokia 5220 XpressMusic with a 2.0-megapixel camera for Rs 7,900.