Kicking ass in colors!

Nokia’s fourth full touchscreen device is also an XpressMusic – joining the 5800XM and 5530XM. This one is actually an exact copy of the 5800XM looks-wise but a downgraded version of it specs-wise.

The screen is still the same at 3.2 inches, the battery as well (1320mAh). What it takes from the 5530XM is the kinetic scrolling and the homescreen, which I hope are coming soon to both the 5800XM and the N97.



Something for Nokia to brag about is the 33-hour music playback time – a spec any music lover would wish for in a multimedia-centric device, be it a mobile phone or a standalone MP3 player. The 3.5mm audio jack is standard, and the memory’s expandable up to 16GB through the microSD slot. A-GPS is still there, so you can actually use this device for navigation as well. And trust me; navigating on such a neat screen is a treat. You’ll be able to transfer music and other kinds of stuff over Bluetooth, but sadly there’s no Wi-Fi. Instead, Nokia opted to go for 3G with the 5230XM, diversifying its touch portfolio to the max: 5800XM has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 3G; 5530XM has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, but no 3G; 5230XM has Bluetooth, 3G, but no Wi-Fi.

The camera on the 5230XM is not that great; you’ll have to shoot your friend’s bachelor in 2.0 megapixel goodness (or badness to be more accurate) but then again, this was not meant to be a cam-phone after all. I’d call it a voice-communicating-MP3-player. Two versions of the phone will be sold, one that doesn’t come with music (DCWM – a new term) and one that CWM. The first variant will retail at about 220$, and the second for around 370$, so you’re paying a 150$ for unlimited music downloads during a whole year. And you’re keeping that music. Wow.

The way I see it, the reason behind all this would be the following: in recently published reports, LG and Nokia revealed some great numbers. LG’s doing better than anyone had expected (even themselves), while Nokia, still crowned “market share leader”, struggled a bit in comparison to last year. However, and quoting from Nokia’s Q2 Report: “In the area of music, Nokia benefited from the continued strong performance by the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, its first mass market touch product, which shipped 3.7 million units during the quarter. More than 6.8 million units have shipped since the device began shipping in late November last year.” That’s not bad at all guys. On the other hand, LG declared selling more than 5 million Cookies (i.e. the LG Cookie, a mobile phone, totally inedible) in 9 months, with over 3 million devices in the last 3 months, a scary number indeed for a manufacturer that was not considered to be competing for the top spot.

So if you compare Nokia’s 5800XM to the LG Cookie, you’d assume Nokia’s device would win by a landslide. It’s true, but if you were a teenager living in a 3.5G-striving-towards-4G type of country, with a passion for music but not for all-in-one devices, what would you choose; a plain-looking black plastic touchscreen device with a red/blue stripe setting you back around 400$ or a colorful less-spec’ed lighter, thinner, and flash UI-powered device that retails for about half that price? I’m not answering this one.

Enter the Nokia 5230XpressMusic. In a quick comparison with the LG Cookie, it’s got a bigger screen (3.2 vs 3.0), 3G connectivity (Cookie hasn’t got it), a bigger battery (1320mAh vs. 900mAh) giving you more music playback/talk time, 30fps VGA video recording (vs. 12fps for the Cookie) for slightly over the Cookie’s price. Add a 150 dollars and you get unlimited music downloads for a whole year. So let’s say these two phones collided having the same specs (which is not the case), the CWM would still be the definite tie-breaker.

While the Cookie appealed to most because of its fun personality – 6 colors were made available at launch (black, brown, silver, gold, white, and pink), Nokia has recently found the color palette it’s been missing for a while, especially in the XpressMusic portfolio; all we used to get was black/red, black/blue, white/blue and white/red combinations. But now, it’s different. The 5230XM gets a colorful treatment with back-covers in black, red, turquoise, light green, and pink, with the main handset being either white or black. XpressCovers brought back to life? A bit of Supernova madness? Perhaps…



The Verdict: the Nokia 5230XM is here to do what its elder brother the 5800XM couldn’t: sell like hell, then sell some more, and outsell all the rest being the TRUE touchscreen device for the MASSES. Will it be able to accomplish that? Well that’s a different story. With the lack of Wi-Fi but the presence of 3G to compensate, you’ve got no speedy connection in case you have no 3G in your country. Here, in Lebanon, we have no 3G. Yet. So personally, I wouldn’t buy this phone; but I’d recommend it to someone who’s not a power user, someone who doesn’t need to be connected all day (still talking about Lebanon), and someone who’s definitely into music. By the time the music store becomes available in my country, I think there’ll be other devices that come with music, and since I’ll be needing Wi-Fi to abuse the Music Store, I’ll stick to something that has WLAN. Elsewhere on Earth (3G-land), this device is cheap, good looking, great to hold, and lots of fun. Both variants (regular and CWM) are an excellent bargain so I give it a 2 thumbs up.