Nokia C5-03 review: Green cadet

Introduction

When touchscreen became affordable its popularity skyrocketed – affordable smartphones are all the rage now. The Nokia C5-03 is the result of both these trends and while it borrows a lot from the C6-01 in terms of design, its pricing is a good deal lower.

Designed for a lower price bracket than its Symbian^3 lookalike, the Nokia C5-03 has some of its specs taken down a notch.

Nokia C5-03 official photos

The Nokia C5-03 is a grandson of the best-selling Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and though it might be the last hurrah for Symbian^1 (or Symbian S60 as old-timers call it) it tries to deliver the same level of satisfaction on the bang for buck meter.

Key features

• Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support
• Tri-band 3G with 10.2 Mbps HSDPA and 2 Mbps HSUPA support
• 3.2" 16M-color TFT LCD resistive touchscreen of 640 x 360 pixel resolution
• 5 megapixel fixed-focus camera and VGA video @ 15fps recording; geotagging
• Symbian S60 OS
• 600 MHz ARM 11 CPU and 128 MB RAM
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g; UPnP
• GPS receiver with A-GPS support and free lifetime voice-guided navigation; free city guides and traffic information
• Digital compass
• 40MB on-board storage, microSD expandable up to 16GB; 2GB card included
• Built-in accelerometer
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• Stereo FM Radio with RDS
• microUSB port (charging)
• Flash and Java support in the web browser
• Stereo Bluetooth 2.0
• Very good audio quality
• Voice commands

Main disadvantages

• Symbian S60 hasn’t aged well
• Relatively limited 3rd party software availability
• Screen has poor viewing angles and behaves badly in the sun
• The camera is a fixed-focus unit with no flash, shutter key or lens protection
• No office document editing (without a paid upgrade); No PDF viewer
• No proximity and ambient light sensors
• No DivX or XviD video support out of the box
• No video-call camera
• No smart dialing

The C5-03 is a very eco-friendly gadget – 80% of the phone body is recyclable, while half of the packaging comes from recycled material (and all of it is recyclable in turn).

It’s a low-price phone with some high-speed connectivity with 10.2Mbps HSDPA and 2Mbps HSUPA. The C5-03 also packs the fastest CPU available on a Nokia S60 device – at 600MHz the old but efficient Symbian just flies.

Nokia C5-03 live shots

The free voice-guided navigation is the single biggest advantage of Symbian-powered Nokias, one that is still unmatched by any other brand or platform. The Nokia C5-03 is a trusty SatNav unit, which will work anywhere in the world and free of charge – you can download all the maps you need (won’t cost you a thing) and Ovi Maps don’t need a data connection to work.

Navigate to the next page for a tour of the Nokia C5-03 hardware – but first, we make a stop at the retail box and the 360-degree showroom.