Nokia 5630 XpressMusic review: A sharp note

Unboxing the Nokia 5630 XpressMusic

The retail package of the Nokia 5630 XpressMusic has all you need to get your Nokia 5630 XpressMusic going. There is a microUSB charger, a peculiarly short data cable, and a set of stereo headphones on a detachable remote. The 860 mAh battery is there as well, while a manual and a mini DVD with software and product information round out the contents.

The bonus tracks include a 4GB microSD card and a soft carrying pouch. What more could you want?

Nokia 5630 Xpress Music unboxed

Nokia 5630 XpressMusic 360-degree spin

The Nokia 5630 Xpress Music measures 112 x 46 x 12 mm and weighs a mere 83 g. Slim and lightweight, the phone sticks to the palm and is reasonably comfortable to navigate. Is it pocketable? Given its size and weight, that really goes without saying.

Design and construction

The Nokia 5630 XpressMusic is thin, light and ready to play. There are three color versions hitting the stores – red on black, blue on grey and chrome on grey, and all of them look fresh and appealing.

The earpiece is centrally placed right next to the secondary VGA video-call camera and the ambient light sensor.

Earpiece, video-call camera and ambient light sensor above the display

The display of the 5630 XpressMusic is among the Nokia’s finest in terms of both contrast and color rendering, and it has an impressively wide viewing angle.

The QVGA screen can display up to 16M colors on a 2.2" diagonal. Sunlight legibility is an absolute treat and a Nokia trademark.

The main grudge we may have here is with the smallish size. The color reproduction also seems a bit off, with a distinct bluish tint visible. That gives the photos displayed on the 5630 somewhat unpleasant cold looks.

A decently-sized display

Beneath the screen, on each side of the D-pad there are three raised areas accommodating the soft keys, the Menu and Clear buttons, and the Call and End/Power buttons. All controls are comfortable to use and occasional mispresses are unlikely to be an issue.

The buttons below the display are comfortable

The old-school-matrix-like dotted symbols on the numberpad are quite unusual but still readable. The buttons themselves are smallish but quite tactile and solid to press. The mouthpiece is placed between the “0” and the hash key.

The Nokia 5630 XpressMusic buttons are small but comfortable

The display backlighting and the white keypad illumination are very strong and even and make the handset a pleasure to use in the dark.

The strong and even white backlighting is quite helpful

The top side of the Nokia 5630 XpressMusic hosts the 3.5mm audio jack and the microUSB port. There’s a small status LED up there too that lights up when the phone connects to a computer or is charging.

The top side of Nokia 5630 XpressMusic

On the left are the standard music player controls, typical of the XpressMusic lineup. They are thin and tactile feedback is not the best, but it’s nothing major. The symbols above the keys glow white in the dark.

Also on the left is the lanyard eyelet.

Music player keys are on the left * the lanyard eyelet is also here

The right side of Nokia 5630 XpressMusic is quite crowded. Here you’ll find the volume rocker and shutter key along with the microSD card slot. The latter has a small protective cap. It is quite hard to pull the microSD card out using your fingers only since the card sinks too deep into the slot and is very difficult to reach. We guess you’d ned a tool every time you want to take it out.

What we said on the comfort of use of the three music player keys goes the same for the controls on the right as well. The volume rocker and the shutter key are just a bit too stiff.

The right side of 5630 XpressMusic: volume rocker, microSD slot and camera key

The microSD slot is said to support cards of up to 16GB, and this was as far as we went testing it. The handset even handled a full 16GB microSD card trouble-free.

The bottom part of the 5630 XpressMusic is pretty bare – there are no buttons or ports to see here.

The Nokia 5630 XpressMusic bottom