Here we go again with another XpressMusic phone review, but this time we are talking about a promising and stylish one: Nokia 5700 XpressMusic. Because music phones are becoming a very important part of every company’s portofolio there is no surprise that a lot of effort is put in developing such devices which can constantly improve their functionality and performance. Even if the features are not all a handset is about , just a look at the features of Nokia’s 5700 can make you fall in love with it.
Design
First look at Nokia 5700 Xpress Music design and won’t give you the impression that this cell phone is too stylish , but when you start using it you’ll have a lot of interesting things to discover and a lot of features will defenetly surprise you. Nokia 5700 is in fact a swivel handset that rotates its keypad to the left or to the right, depending on what features you would like to use. It’s bigger than common phones (108 x 50 x 17 mm), but not as heavy as you would’ve guessed from the numbers. It weighs exactly 115 grams, including the battery.
On the right side , hidden under a black rubber band, you can find the miniUSB , charge port and the microSD memory slot while on the left side there are the volume keys. Also right on the bottom of the left side, you’ll notice the 2 Megapixel camera that features flash capabilities. On top of the phone, there’s the usual power button, while on the bottom you can notice the 2.5mm jack port. The keypad of the phone features only 2 specific Symbian keys which are placed above the keypad. This model’s keyboard doesn’t include an edit key so you’ll have to get used without it. Oh, i’ve noticed something very dissapointing, the 5-way Joystick is very hard to use.Getting to the battery is not as simple as usual but you’ll soon get used with it. First time you have to open the back cover by lifting the plastic tag on the back of the phone, then you have to remove the tag and procede releasing the battery cover by rotating the swivel to 90 degrees and using the gaps under it. Under the battery lies the SIM card slot that has a lock mechanism that should be used, once a SIM card is inserted.
Camera and Display Quality
From what we’ve seen , Nokia 5700 Xpress Music features a much better display than Nokia 3250 and with the high speed CPU you’ll have a great gaming experience. The display in Nokia 5700 may not be oversized, but with its 2.2″ diagonal it is on the right side of big in its class. Moreover it is one of exceptional quality and with its 16M colors and QVGA resolution provides fine and smooth graphics. The emphasis here is its legibility under direct sunlight. When exposed to even the brightest sunlight, Nokia 5700 is doing an incredible job up to the highest Finnish standards. We have been repeatedly mentioning Nokia’s hybrid electronic displays consisting both light emissive and light reflective elements in our reviews. Nokia 5700 is another step ahead of the competition in this seemingly one-horse race.
Using the swivel mechanism by turning the keypad 90 degrees to the right you can easily shoot pictures or clips with it’s 2 Megapixel camera embedded. We couldn’t produce a picture more than 230 pixels high no matter how hard we tried. You can also adjust white balance and color tone manually.
Flash settings are also present although the built-in LED flash is quite inadequate even indoors. Pictures are stored in JPEG format and carry EXIF information. As far as quality is concerned, we find the 2 megapixel camera a jot below-average, but still passable. The picture quality is pretty much the same as the one of the Nokia E70 – they seem to have identical hardware and processing. The phone has zoom capabilities that you can access through the 5-way joystick or the music player controls Forward and Back. The maximum resolution for pictures is 1600 x 1200 pixels, while movies can be recorded in 320 x 240 pixels (.mp4 format).
Phone’s Menu and Software
Nokia 5700 Xpress Music runs the latest Symbian 9.2 version OS and includes Feature Pack 1. The 3.1 interface proves to be very stable on the 5700 model and is the most user-friendly. The Feature Pack 1 provides 3D graphics hardware support, over-the-air (OTA) firmware support, Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR support, Flash Lite 2.0, as well as a better organization of the file cache. The Alarm clock function was updated, you are now able to use multiple repeating alarms while the limit for voice recordin has been improved from 1 minute to 1 hour.
Another interesting thing is that the browser was updated to OSS Browser 2.0 integrated which is only compatible with Symbian 3rd Edition handsets. It seems that Nokia gave up on the Opera browser and started to develop its own software that will probably be called Nokia Browser. To conclude, the new Nokia Browser is more stable and much faster and manages to handle big web pages better than before.
Communication
The phone supports Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP and EDR which can reach 105 KB/s data transfer speed. Unfortunately, the phone doesn’t charge itself when connected to the PC through the miniUSB cable. Messaging capabilities include IMAP4, POP3 and SMTP email account compatibility, as well as “Push to Talk” and Instant Messaging. here are also GPS applications preinstalled on the handset, but infortunately there’s no GPS chipset included. Maybe we’ll see it at the future version of the phone. The quad-band GSM (UMTS / GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900) network compatible handset has a strong reception of the signal when you’re setting the network on GSM mode. The conversation sound is crystal clear and very loud, so you won’t have problems with it no matter where you push to talk.
Processor and Memory Capacity
Nokia 5700 features the same processor an ARM11 CPU running at 369 MHz speeds and its operating system works very good thanks to this powerful processor. The handset is very speedy , so fast that there are no lags when loading third-party Java or Symbian applications. The phone sports only 40 MB internal memory, but fortunately there is a microSD slot card for memory expansion up to 4GB. There’s also a 512 MB or 1 GB microSD memory card included in the shipping package.
Multimedia
Thanks to the separate CPU that processes the sound The 5700 Xpress Music features a “crystal clear Hi-Fi sound quality” and “Hi-Fi sound with built-in stereo loudspeakers”. The Nokia 5700 Xpress Music loudspeaker it’s no better than Nokia 5700 and 3250′s and they sound pretty much the same. In terms of earphone and built-in speakers, Nokia 5700 again fails to outrun the N91 and quality nears and even surpasses the 3250 model. If I were to buy a music phone and have to choose between Nokia 3250 and Nokia 5700 it would be a very difficult choice indeed. The music player is quite usual indeed. It has not undergone any innovations or significant changes compared to other Symbian 3rd edition devices. The supported file formats are MP3, AAC, m4a, eAAC+ and WMA. The controls of the player are very intuitive. It also manages the M3U playlist format perfectly and can even handle the file automatically if it is placed in the same directory as the tracks. Users can use card readers for transferring music to the memory card but the phone’s own USB port is just as fast and thus a much more convenient solution.
Battery
Nokia 5700 Xpress Music has been given a “lower” 900 mAh Li-Polymer battery which seems to be more efficient than 3250′s 1100 mAh Li-Ion battery. 5700′s battery can take about 2 hours for a full charge and about 9 hours and 30 minutes of music playback . The battery should give you more than 10 hours of music playback or around 4-5 hours of talking. The BP-5M battery suits perfectly to phone’s profile, offering long playback time and adequate talking time.
Key features:
* Fast and responsive user interface
* Excellent display, with unmatched legibility under direct sunlight
* Great earphones
* Symbian S60 3rd edition FP1
* Sporty, youthful design
* The swiveling part is well-built and very functional
Main disadvantages:
* Awkward joystick
* Weak bass
* Bizarre Menu and C keys
* No Pencil key
* No built-in 3.5mm jack
The good
Nice balance of size and weight; twisting motion to activate applications; hot-swappable microSD card slot; FM radio; 3G; Bluetooth stereo; robust Series 60 platform.
The bad
Difficult to reach for joystick when in camera mode; Menu and Cancel keys don’t light up; no built-in 3.5mm audio jack; unusable night picture quality.
The verdict
We’ve said a lot of Nokia 5700 and we finally came to a conclusion. We belive the Nokia 5700 performance as a smartphone is by far superior to its music capabilities. So if you are looking for a phone to use for strictly music purposes, you’d better look elsewhere. Are you after a balanced overall performance? Look no further. Nokia 5700 is exactly the phone for you and its unmatched speed will never make you regret your purchase.
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