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Nokia 5530 XpressMusic mobile phone review

Posted by Gareth Beavis on Thu 13 Aug 2009

Touchscreen tech on a budget

Nokia has announced its latest touchscreen offering, the 5530 XpressMusic, following in the footsteps of the Nokia N97 and the 5800 XpressMusic.

However this time round it’s shaved a considerable amount off the price tag, bringing you a touchscreen offering for a penny under £130 through the Carphone Warehouse.

- Watch our hands-on video with the 5530 >>

- See the 5530 up close in our hands-on gallery here

And that’s not all - it’s running the Symbian S60 OS (5th edition) so not only do you get a neat touchscreen mobile, it also has the brain of a smartphone, thus making it into a decent proposition for those who like to add to their handset.

The 2.9-inch screen might be a little small for some tastes, especially as it doesn’t quite fill the frame of the 5530 (thanks to a touch sensitive button which gives you quick access to all your media applications) and stereo speakers placed at each end.

The screen is resistive, meaning you can use a stylus (which is handily embedded in the chassis of the phone) but lacks the accuracy of the Apple iPhone or Palm Pre, and was a little infuriating at times when trying to work out whether you needed to single- or double-tap a menu icon.

The whole thing is a mixture of plastic and stainless steel, and while a little light in the hand, fits nicely in the palm and slips easily in and out the pocket.

The home screen has a few neat touches as well, with widgets to show you the latest email in the inbox, a watered down version of the music player when you’re listening to songs, and contact icons housing your favourite people.

The 5800 XpressMusic had a similar system of home screen contact display, giving you the chance to assign a picture to the icon and listing messages and call history with the chosen contact. However, this phone only allowed you to choose four friends - the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic allows you to select up to 20.

You can also add in web feeds for each of your friends, meaning you can see when they update a blog, a Flickr feed or Facebook.

Taking into account the £130 price tag, you can see that Nokia has had to make some sacrifices with the 5530 XpressMusic. For instance there’s no 3G on board (although there is Wi-Fi), which means that web browsing moves at a snail’s pace when out and about.

While it is true you’re most likely to be browsing the web when either at home or at work on the phone (and thus able to make use of the Wi-Fi) when you want to upload a picture to Flickr or similar service, you’re always going to be on the move, and then the speeds are woefully slow.

The camera on the 5530 XpressMusic isn’t the best quality either - while we do get an LED flash, the 3.2 megapixel effort is devoid of Carl Zeiss optics, which significantly lowers picture quality, but it's far from horrific.

We’re not saying that you’ll hate the camera because of it (the plethora of photography options on board are excellent) but don’t expect to be blowing them up on the computer screen with any success.

One of the big advantages of using the Symbian S60 OS is the ability to download applications via the newly-formed Ovi Store, Nokia’s answer to Apple’s App Store and Google’s Android Market.

Weirdly, it’s not installed on the 5530 XpressMusic out the box, so you have to head off onto the internet (preferably on Wi-Fi) and download it yourself. It does give full access to the store, which is a little under-populated at the moment but will quickly swell in the future.

The XpressMusic is, as you can imagine, set up for media, and the music player is supplemented nicely by a 3.5mm headphone jack and stereo widening. Music playback quality is pretty good without being stellar, but if you’re getting a phone for the price, you have to expect a certain performance level.

Similarly with video - the 2.9-inch screen isn’t the best for watching a feature film, but can handle the odd music video. The phone can playback MP4 and 3GP files, but keep an eye on the resolution - any high res MP4 files will only play back in audio mode.

Link: Nokia

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