Nokia 5230 review : a cheap all-touch smartphone

I have been using Nokia 5230 for a good 20 days now ( I got it the very first day it was released in Indian markets though in overseas market, it has been available since August 2009 :(  ).Nokia 5230 was released at a time when Samsung Corby was hot in the market and Samsung Star and LG Cookie, though older touchscreen phones were selling in good numbers.

Its a smart-phone (running Symbian series 60 v5 OS), its all touch, has a 3.2 inch screen, it has got an accelrometer, proximity-sensors, 3G and A-GPS and its dirt cheap, retailing for about INR 8500 in Indian market.

So, has nokia found its killer touchscreen-phone-for-the-masses in 5230? Lets pull apart the nokia 5230 to see what it has to offer.

For its muscles, nokia 5230 has got an ARM 11 434 MHz processor and 128 MB RAM with 256 MB ROM. For those who are not able to appreciate this, only 10 years ago it was difficult to find such specs in a desktop computer. And its also well fed with a 1320 mAh battery. With normal usage (some music, some video, a bit shooting), expect the battery to last for 1+1/2 days and with minimal usage, 2+1/2 days, not bad for a smartphone.

Now, the phone has Symbian series 60 operating system (v5). Its the same tried and tested OS which nokia has always been using for its smartphones, only refined and revamped for touch screen. The OS isn't bad, its very responsive and sleek, I won't say it to be fabulous either. The OS could have been more finger friendly because sometimes you feel the itch for stylus (very rarely though and the phone does have a bundled stylus) Android would have been much better. Though the OS is old, there is a severe lack of applications simply because most applications depend on a physical keyboard which this phone lacks. Ditto with java applications. Actually I couldn't even find a working dictionary for the phone! ( the dictionary supplied with the phone is grossly inadequate). The java implementation , well sucks!!

The OS is very snappy with rare sluggishness. Nokia has done a good job here because I have seen some cheap "smartphones" where you press a key and wait for ages for the phone to respond.

The 3.2 inch screen is big , bright and colourful though its difficult to use out in the sun. The touchscreen is resistive, so you will have to apply a bit pressure. Capacitive touchscreen would have been better but we have a saying in our circle " itne paise mein itna hi milega :) ". Once you get a hang of the touchscreen, you will find it easy to use. The auto-rotate ( phone has in-built acclerometer ) and kinetic-scrolling (the harder you swipe the screen, the faster things will scroll)  features are fun to use. The proximity-sensor locks the phone when you take it near to your ears during a call to prevent accidental touches ( another rip-off from iPhone).

Music quality is mediocre, a good set of earphones shall help. Watching videos on the crisp and colorful screen is a treat. Nokia 5230 has a 2MP camera without flash so you cant hope much from the camera except in very good light condition. Video recording is good when there is plenty of light.

People living in metros will find the A-GPS (Assisted GPS) feature useful. Once the 3G becomes mainstream in India , the 3G feature of phone can be put to good use. Meanwhile, curious can get 3G services from MTNL or BSNL. Phone lacks wi-fi though. You can use wireless headsets over bluetooth. Of course you can connect the phone to PC using bluetooth or micro-USB cable (type B). However neither cable nor PC-Suite is supplied with the pack, only a poor quality earphone. But the 3.5 mm audio jack more than makes up for it because you can use any off-the-shelf earphone available in the market.

The phone comes with preinstalled browser, dictionary, caluclator, converter and gadgets for youtube, facebook, hi5 etc. Browser looks good, not as good as Opera but the dictionary leaves out so many words. While setting up my email account, it automagically filled up the server details for gmail. I have not tested for other mail services. There is also the nokia ovi app for managing and downloading music and applications from the Ovi store. Nokia maps is also provided for use with GPS though Google maps should be better.

Overall, Nokia 5230 is a good phone offering several features which other touchscreen phones in same price range lack. For most people camera could be a let-down but then the phone is not about the camera, its for those who want a smart phone but on a very tight budget. Anyways, even its competitors(Corby, Star, Cookie) lack a good camera. Besides, Nokia 5230 offers 3.2" touch-screen,3G, AGPS and 3.5mm audio jack , previously unheard of at this price.