Nokia 5300 review: Hop on the music express

There is an Organizer menu, you know

The Nokia 5300 has a separate Organizer menu which includes applications to help you stay on schedule. The Alarm clock allows for only one alarm to be set but it can be repeated on given days of the week. Nokia 5300 will wake you up with a standard beep sound, with any sound saved in the phone, or with radio signal, provided earphones are plugged in. The snooze time of the alarm is also configurable.

The calendar application is nicely developed. The monthly view includes details like the weeks and the week days, while the Weekly view includes details like the days and the hourly schedule for those days. The week begins according to the wish of the user - on Saturday, Sunday or Monday.

The calendar offers 5 types of events: meeting, call, birthday, memo, and reminder. The last one, the reminder, is used for fast inserting something that has to be reminded of soon. It is quite useful since in other mobiles you often need to use the "meeting" option as a reminder one, which unnecessarily complicates things. The Reminder in Nokia 5300 includes the following details: subject, place, starting date and time, end date and time, reminder date and time, reminder type, repetition (never, daily, weekly, every two weeks, monthly, and annually). The phone offers synchronization of notes and calendar events with both a PC and a remote server.

Organizer menu • alarm clock options • calendar: monthly & weekly views

The To-Do list is simple enough. Here you can only add a subject, a priority, a term, and a reminder type. Accomplished tasks can be marked off. List items can be ordered in alphabetic order or by deadline. Tasks are very easy to transfer into the calendar.

Text notes are quite handy, because they get synchronized with PC, which allows for longer texts to be downloaded into the phone. Font size is not configurable. Yet, in my opinion it is the text notes where three font size options would have been really helpful (just like in the SMS application).

Setting up a To-do event • putting down a note

Nokia 5300 offers a voice recorder and as in all Series 40 Nokia models, the voice record duration depends on the available free memory only. The recorder cannot be used when a data call or GPRS connection is active but can freely be turned on during voice calls. It's up to your will whether the recordings will be stored onto the internal memory or onto the memory card. Nokia 5300 uses the .amr format and a one-minute recording uses approximately 100 KB of the memory. Here Nokia engineers could have designed the side button on the left side of the phone to start the voice record instead the Push to talk function or at least it should have been made user configurable.

The menu also has a countdown timer and a stopwatch. The Java applications include a unit & currency converter, a calculator, an Introduction and Sensor application. The Calculator is quite detailed, offering not only standard mathematic operations, but also work with powers, square roots, reciprocals, functions and memory functions. Yet, it ignores common operator priority. The Sensor is a Nokia Bluetooth application allowing for communication between two devices in close proximity. The idea behind it is that people that do not know each other can chat, exchange profiles, user data or mobile content. The Introduction is a special Flash-based tutorial on using the mobile's main functions. It is well designed and does its job.

Calculator • Unit converter • Nokia Sensor • 5300 Introduction flash

One of the things we missed is an application for viewing MS Office and Adobe Acrobat PDF files. Yet the phone allows you to read .txt files and we find that quite handy.

Having fun is what it's all about

Nokia 5300 supports Java 2.0. The test phone we got featured 3 pre-installed games: Pro Snowboard, Music Guess and Snake III. The Snake III game is a nicely elaborated 3D variant of the legendary Snake game and features interesting graphics, but disappoints when it comes to amusement. The controls are rather complicated and you can hardly get the apple you are after since the snake doesn't turn in the right moment you want it to turn. There are two in-game views available - one where the camera follows the snake's head and another one that watches the game sidewise.

The Pro Snowboard is an amusing piece of sport action. You control your snowboard character to perform different stunts and tricks and collect power-ups and bonuses along the way.

The Music Guess game is rather innovative. It takes the music files saved on your mobile and plays them to you while offering you a choice of several names to guess the correct name of the song. And not only that you have to guess the song's name but you have to do it fast to earn points. Each track is played for several seconds only.

Pro Snowboard & Snake III games

Music guess

Final words…

At first glance Nokia 5300 failed to impress us with its design and the materials used for its body. In fact we think that the white color and matt plastic with rubber elements make it look cheap. It's not among the slimmest devices either.

But armed with the highly user-configurable S40 user interface it scores even with the corresponding Sony Ericsson user interface and even makes a stride ahead. The menu is organized logically; functions are detailed, offering high control comfort and brilliant work efficiency.

Nokia advertisement campaign on the XpressMusic handsets clearly shows that they are made for young people having fun. The available microSD memory card slot, the miniUSB port and the standard 3.5 mm audio jack adapter make it great for enjoying music on the go. You can even fancy a stereo Bluetooth headset to go with it. The slider form factor would most definitely attract attention too, since the Walkman line lacks a slider in this price category. Summing it up, if you like the sporty design, Nokia 5300 is a highly attractive music proposal from the Finnish manufacturer and it definitely deserves your attention when picking up a new mobile this holiday season.