Nokia 5310 XpressMusic vs Sony Ericsson W890i

There’s no denying that, when you pick these two phones up, one of them has a slightly classier feel than the other, which feels a bit more, well er, basic.

Made out of brushed metal, Sony Ericsson’s W890i, has a reassuringly expensive (although it’s not) feel to it. It just looks quite stylish and like something you’d be happy to pull out of your pocket/handbag on a night out without any embarrassment.

That’s not to say the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic is a monster by any means. It is quite pretty in its own right, it just looks a little plasticky compared to Sony’s efforts and, at first glimpse anyway, looks like it might be more at home in a playground. That said, the 5310 XpressMusic is certainly a step up in design class from its predecessors.

The colour schemes of both handsets also make interesting reading. Sony has opted for metal brushing around the back with either silver, brown or black at the front, while Nokia has gone for black and graphite grey with either red or blue making up the media player control colour strip.

The W890i screams of serious music sophistication – you’d imagine finding some classical or operatic tunes on a device like this – while the 5310 XpressMusic smacks of fun, funky disco times. We know who we’d rather be stuck next to on a long bus journey!

Once you move beyond the materials and colour schemes of the two devices you can really start to see what they have to offer. Both handsets are incredibly light and slim at less than 80g a piece. On one hand this is great as it means no awkward trouser pocket bulges, but on the other it often makes you paranoid that your phone is missing a bit. 

Navigation
We found both handsets very easy to get to grips with intuitive interfaces all around. Seasoned Nokia users could probably find their way around the 5310 XpressMusic with their eyes closed thanks to the S40 OS but newbies will also find navigation a doddle.

Configuring shortcuts based on the apps that you use most adds another element of personalisation to Nokia’s 5310 XpressMusic. With all the main file formats supported, finding the tune you want quickly and easily is merely a click or two away.

The W890i features SensMe so you can select a tune to suit your mood, in addition to the Activity menu which lets you bring together the apps you’re likely to use the most into one easy-to-access place. The menu is grid-based and other shortcuts are up for grabs from the D-pad of soft keys.

We were also pleasantly surprised to find Google Maps lurking on the phone, which was an added bonus.

The 5310 XpressMusic is a bit more overt in telling people that it is a music phone, with the music player controls clearly standing out from the rest of the keypad. The W890i is a little more understated. Both approaches have their merits.

The 5310 XpressMusic’s keys are slightly raised and diamond cut, enhancing the user experience. The W890i’s keys are pleasant enough – and certainly an evolution away from those horrible rice grain pads - but things were a tad less tactile.

Features are pretty standard on both handsets and the screens – at 2-inches a piece – do the job adequately. If you were adding video to the mix, a bigger screen would have been much more desirable.

Connectivity a –go-go
Connectivity is another area where you can usually separate the wheat from the chaff mobile-wise. It’s no secret that the 5310 XpressMusic is positioned at the budget/affordable end of Nokia’s pricing spectrum. As we all know, when you cut costs, you often have to sacrifice features and 3G is the sacrificial element here, leaving users instead with GSM and GPRS. Nokia has, however, lumped in an Opera Mini browser, which makes rendering pages a much more civilised affair.

And it’s not all bad, you also get Yahoo! Go software with its mini customisable applications bundled with the 5310 XpressMusic, in addition to access to mobile widgets thanks to Nokia’s WidSets.

The W890i, however, does serve up a nice big dollop of 3G, which may just sway some users who was a good mix of style, substance and fast web action. It also comes with the Access NetFront web browser which we found enhanced the web browsing experience no end.

All about the quality
Of course, a music phone would be pretty pointless if the sound quality was dire. Thankfully, both Sony and Nokia have not let us down in this respect.

Both the 5310 XpressMusic and W890i offer superb audio quality using the speakers out of the box. They also allow you to plug your own 3.5mm headphones in too, upping the quality ante somewhat. You can also adjust equaliser settings on Sony’s handset, as you’d expect from a Walkman-branded phone.

We weren’t massively impressive by the speaker quality on the W890i, but we put this down to a clash with the metal materials used for the casing. And, anyway, isn’t it just annoying yoofs who listen to music on their phone’s loudspeakers these days?

Storage on both the 5310 XpressMusic and W890i is not going to exactly blow you away but they certainly have enough to cope with the volume of songs an average music lover is likely to throw at them.

Verdict
Sony Ericsson’s Walkman line-up is tough competition for any other new music phone contenders. Unfortunately for Nokia, its 5310 XpressMusic device, although great, is included in that good-but-not-better list. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but one day soon, Nokia is likely to steal an edge in the music stakes, but until then the W890i maintains the lead.

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