Nokia 5330 Mobile TV Edition review: As seen on TV

Modest retail package

The Nokia 5330 Mobile TV edition retail package is downright low-end. A 1GB microSD card, a charger and a one-piece handsfree is all you get inside the box.

There’s not much to see in the box

In addition to the meager storage, Nokia has skimped on the USB cable as well. There isn’t one in the retail box, presumably in an attempt to bring the price down.

Nokia 5330 Mobile TV edition 360-degree spin

The Nokia 5330 Mobile TV edition stands at 101 x 48 x 14 mm, which is reasonably compact for a slider with a 2.4” screen. It will easily fit into most pockets so there’s very little to worry about there.

The phone weighs 113 grams, which is probably a bit more than you would expect given the dimensions and the all plastic case. Still, it gives the 5330 Mobile TV edition a good solid feel that we really appreciated.

Design and construction

The Nokia 5330 Mobile TV edition looks pretty nice at first glance with is sleek piano black finish. The problem is that it easily turns into a smudgy mess, so those positive impressions don’t last for long.

Also the quality of the plastic used for the body seems to be shockingly poor, scratching far too easy for the handset to maintain any visual attraction in the long run.

The Nokia 5330 Mobile TV edition comes complete with a 2.4” display of QVGA resolution.

While its contrast levels are nowhere near the best examples on the market today, the viewing angles of the Nokia 5330 display are quite good. Brightness levels are acceptable given the price range.

In any case non-touch feature phones don’t come with much better displays so the Nokia 5330 Mobile TV edition deserves a decent mark. However this is one of the reasons why those handsets aren’t the best ones to watch TV on, yet the 5330 is designed to do just that.

Sunlight legibility is excellent.

The 2.4” display isn’t much to rave about

The ample D-pad is dead center on the navigational pad below the screen sided by four other keys (two soft buttons and two call management keys). All keys are decently sized and create no usability issues.

There are two keys on each side of the D-pad

The earpiece is above the the Nokia 5330 Mobile TV edition display, while on the left of it are the three touch-sensitive music keys. Those feel somewhat unnatural to use at first given the non-touch nature of the handset but once you get used to them, they become a comfortable way of controlling the music player.

The earpiece and the touch-sensitive music keys are just next to the display

The right side of the handset features the volume rocker and the screen lock/unlock slider. There is no dedicated camera key here but it’s not badly missed when the camera is only fixed focus.

There are a couple of keys on the right side of the phone

Because the microphone pinhole is located at the lower half of the slider, the bottom of the phone is completely bare.

It’s pretty boring at the bottom

The left-hand side of the Nokia 5330 Mobile TV edition features the loudspeaker grill, the lanyard eyelet and the microSD card slot. There is a protective cover over the card slot to keep away dirt and grime.

The microSD card goes in on the right

There are three openings at the top of the phone. The 2mm charger plug is located on the left, followed by the microUSB port and the 3.5mm audio jack. There is another cap over the USB port but the audio jack is left exposed.

The three ports on top

Opening the slider reveals the 12-key alphanumeric keypad, surrounded by a glowing bluish line which we believe youngsters will appreciate. It’s the flatbed type but does have some bordering between keys on different rows and columns.

The reasonably comfortable keypad is surrounded by a glowing bluish line

The keys are decently sized and with good press feedback, making a positive overall impression and allowing decent typing speeds.

We conclude our trip of the Nokia 5330 Mobile TV edition hardware with the rear panel. This is where the 3 megapixel camera lens is located, along with its LED flash companion. Neither the fixed-focus camera nor the short-range flash are anything to brag about but we will come back to them later in this review.

A 3 megapixel camera doesn’t really impress anyone nowadays

Under the back panel you can find the 1000 mAh Li-Ion BL-4U battery, which powers the Nokia 5330 Mobile TV edition. The battery is quoted at up to 350 hours of stand-by or up to 7 hours and 42 minutes of talk-time. Those are pretty good numbers and real life performance backs them up.

With a few minutes of telephony and about an hour of fiddling with the other features of the phone each day, the Nokia 5330 Mobile TV edition lived through four full days, and that is a pretty decent.

The battery delivers reasonable performance

However despite the nice ergonomics, our general opinion about the Nokia 5330 Mobile TV edition build quality is pretty poor. The handset never left the office nor was it subjected to any abuse, and yet its back was scratched all over. If laying it on its back on a desk is too much for this handset to handle, we don’t know what Nokia were thinking during the design process.

The Nokia 5330 Mobile TV edition held in hand