Nokia 5310 review: XpressMusic slimline

Nokia 5310 made thousands of fans with its very announcement. Packing a 16M color QVGA display, dedicated music keys, stereo Bluetooth and FM radio in a sleek thin body, this neat handset is sure to appeal to quite a lot of slim phone admirers. Plus, the XpressMusic logo is a good enough premise for music phone fans to be on the watch-out too. With the first XpressMusic bar-shape we have an amazingly thin and lightweight handset with serious sonic power.

Nokia 5310 official photos

Key features

• 9.9 mm slim and lightweight
• 3.5 mm standard jack
• Lots of preloaded applications
• 2" 16M color display with QVGA resolution
• Ambient light sensor
• Decent keypad
• Bluetooth with A2DP
• S40 5th edition user interface
• Stereo FM radio with RDS
• Dedicated music keys
• microSD card slot (2GB memory card included)

Main disadvantages

• Mediocre camera with no flash or auto focus, really slow
• Tri-band only
• No 3G
• Memory card slot under the battery cover
• Inadequate QCIF video recording
• Uneven backlighting

It seems that Nokia is more determined than ever to get its fair share of the slim phone market. Releasing 5310 right after the 6500 classic comes to prove that producing phones less than 10 mm thick is no problem for the Finns. Moreover, Nokia 5310 seems an attempt at winning the hearts of the music loving masses and, as we see it, might just be the right stuff for that.

Nokia 5310 views

Reflecting on its corner of the mobile phone market, we think Nokia 5310 will face the strongest competition from Sony Ericsson W880 and W890, when the latter hits the shelves. Other potential rivals are the Samsung Ultra phones, as Samsung is well known for the high audio quality of its handsets and true mastery of the slim shape.

Nokia 5310 and Sony Ericsson W890 head to head