Nokia 5730 XpressMusic Mobile Review

A 2-inch QVGA screen, backlit keys, a 1,000mAh battery good for 4.5 hours of yappin’, EDGE data, inbuilt GPS, 128MB of RAM, a microSD card slot, USB / Bluetooth and Symbian S60 running the show. Expectation of launching it in European markets is coming April month for €220 ($289), though worldwide availability remains a mystery.

The only reason why they have thrown the Nokia 5730 into their music-minded line-up is that Nokia are trying to sell the same phone and form-factor in to two different flavors so as to win as big a share as possible. In fact, it wouldn’t be a mistake to say that they are forging a new segment of side-sliders with thumbboards, instead of assessing every Nokia-branded phone of this kind separately. So, if they’ll manage to reach some good numbers in terms of aggregated sales – the whole segment will get a green light.

While the Nokia 5730 won’t face any sort of direct competition, this fact alone doesn’t guarantee it will be sell in droves. In fact, its predecessor, the Nokia 5320 didn’t have any rivals either, but it never became a particularly popular offering. On top of that, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic will be hard to compete with, given that they will be only 60 Euro away from each other price-wise.

Design, Size, Controls
The phone will be available in two standard XpressMusic colors – blue and red. As you have already noticed, we got our hands on its blue edition. The top edge is metallic and really resembles that of the Nokia N810. But don’t let it deceive you – the rest of the phone is made of plastic. Its glossy front fascia sports a bog-standard keypad that is quite a fingerprint-magnet among all other things.

Perched on the left is the volume rocker along with the dedicated camera key. Sitting on the bottom edge of the phone is the 3.5 mm audio jack, while the 3.2 MP camera lens (Carl Zeiss) and a LED flash are mounted on the back side of the phone.

Display
The phone ships with a 2-inch QVGA display (240×320 pixels, 31×42 mm). This screen offers 16 million colors, along with a juicy and vibrant picture that is readable in various environments. All in all, it’s a likable display that won’t give you any trouble whatsoever. It accommodates up to 8 text and 3 service lines all written in a convenient font. Just like you’d expect, you can alter the font size in certain menus (like Messaging, where amplified fonts do much better) and reach 14 text lines as a result.

Keypad
The 5730 XpressMusic sports a sizable navigation cluster with medium-sized, yet soft-to-press buttons. All in all, it is a breeze to work with. The keys here are lit in relatively dim white. Also, the navigation pad houses a touch-sensitive pad.

The bundled QWERTY keyboard is comfortable to use as well; the best thing about it is that you can type using both hands and your fingers won’t bump into each other, since it’s spacious enough even for people with big fingers.