Nokia 5320 review: Teensmart

Teensmart

GSMArena team, 08 August 2008.

Great phonebook as usual

The Symbian handsets have an excellent phonebook with virtually unlimited capabilities. There is storage space for practically unlimited number of contacts and fields, with all the available memory potentially usable for the purpose. Contacts can be freely ordered by first or last name and can naturally be searched by gradual typing of any of the names.

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The phonebook displays numbers in the phone memory, on SIM card or both simultaneously • Viewing contact details

Editing a contact offers a great variety of preset fields and you can replicate each of them as many times as you like. You can also create new fields if you happen to be able to think of one. We personally find it quite a challenge to think of something Nokia has missed here. Personal ringtones and videos are also available for assigning. If you prefer you may group your contacts and give each group a specific ringtone.

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An enormous variety of fields is available when editing a contact

Synchronization is also nice and easy although you do need the Nokia PC suite for the things to go so smooth. Sending and receiving contacts via SMS or Bluetooth is also a piece of cake.

The Call log application is another Nokia 5320 strength. It holds up to 20 call records in each of the tabs for outgoing, received and missed calls. These are all accessed by pressing the Call key on the homescreen.

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The call log is there to keep track of your communications

If you enter the Log application from the main menu, you'll see a detailed list of all your network communications for the past 30 days. These include messages, calls and data transfers. The period can be shortened to save some space but you are quite unlikely to do that, as even with a huge number of calls the log only takes a few miserly kilobytes of memory space.

Messaging comes right

Texting with Nokia 5320 is spot on. With a decent keypad and great software support your correspondence is as good as it gets on this kind of devices. After all, targeting the young sure puts messaging in focus.

The Nokia 5320 supports all common message types - SMS, MMS and email. The SMS and MMS share an editor. It is the well known intuitive application from previous Symbian S60 smartphones. It has a counter of characters left to the limit of 160. There is also an indicator in brackets showing the number of separate parts the message will be divided into for sending.

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Turning an SMS into MMS is as simple as adding any multimedia content

It goes without saying that a delivery report can be activated. The reports pop up on the standby screen and are subsequently saved in a separate folder in the messaging sub-menu. When you are exiting the message editor without having sent the message, the editor prompts saving it to the Drafts folder or discarding it.

All it takes to convert a common SMS into an MMS is insert some multimedia content. A nice feature allows resizing pictures automatically for sending via MMS.

Nokia 5320 also features the dedicated audio message editor. Even if technically a type of MMS, the audio messages have their own separate editor. You can either record the message on the spot or use a previously recorded sound clip.

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The audio message editor has questionable applicability

The email client is also very similar to what previous Symbian powered phones have offered. If you are using any public email service (it has to be among the over 1000 supported providers), all you have to do is enter your email address and password to start sending and receiving emails. Nokia 5320 takes care of downloading all the relevant settings to get you going in no time.

The client can download headers only or entire messages, and can be set to automatically check mail at a given interval. There is also support for attachments, signatures and basically most of the things you can think of, so Nokia 5320 can meet almost any requirement regarding the user emailing needs.

Reader comments

  • Anonymous
  • 01 Dec 2023
  • JA1

Yeah guys, another 5320 fan here! Got it for my 11th birthday in 2009, used it until 2014 when I switched to Xperia Z. Broke its screen just half a year after this, guess I got used to 5320's sturdiness. Still have it on my shelf fully functiona...

  • Nickname
  • 12 Jun 2022
  • 0ks

Nothing much has changed :D This was my last phone before I jumped on Android. Love how pretty much all phones were easily distinguishable and unique at the time before touchscreen fully took over.

Damn... seem's no love anymore for this phone, seeing last comment is from 2013 🤭 This phone is when i still in high school time around 2008 ish, and keep using it until 2012... maybe... i forgot 😂 To whoever future person that read th...