Nokia has been making lots of mobile music noise recently, with the launch of its touchscreen 5800 XpressMusic phone, and the debut of its Comes With Music unlimited track download service.

With the 5220 XpressMusic though, Nokia has extended its portfolio of music-majoring handsets with a less headline-grabbing device, but one that still offers a distinctive touch of stand-out quirkiness. Its slimline 10.5mm-thin casing follows the funky XpressMusic template - black with striking metallic blue or red trim, including dedicated music player button in the side.

But Nokia has also introduced a novel sloping asymmetrical design for the bodywork, giving the phone a subtly slanted top and bottom.

While not an entirely new concept (Sagem did it first 10 years ago), it provides the 5220 XpressMusic with some eye-catching shelf-appeal - a big advantage in the crowded budget music mobile market.

Looks aside, though, the 5220 XpressMusic's music capabilities top the bill, centred on some fine music player software inside. Its other features are more middle of the road; it doesn't have 3G connectivity, relying on tri-band GPRS/EDGE for data connectivity, and its camera is a fairly basic 2-megapixel shooter.

Still, like many of its mid- to low-priced stablemates, Nokia stuffs in a healthy number of additional features, including applications for web-based services such as Flickr, Yahoo! Go, Nokia's WidSets and Nokia Maps. And as well as its own browser, Nokia has loaded up the excellent Opera Mini browser.

Design and handling
Weighing just 78g, the 5220 XpressMusic feels great in the hand, with a textured back panel giving a good grip while the 108(h)x43.5(w) x10.5(d)mm dimensions makes it nicely pocketable. A big thumbs-up  too for the numberpad; its defiantly non-quirky keys are slightly raised on its glossy black fascia but are well-separated and very responsive - perfect for rapid-fire texting.

The display is an average-sized 2-inch QVGA, 256K-colour screen that does its job as well as you'll need. Controls are conventionally arranged around a navigation D-pad and are straightforward to use - Nokia's standard Series 40 user interface keeps menu navigation ticking along in its usual user-friendly way. With the Active Standby option on, you get a row of icon-based shortcuts heading the display, plus info updates and fast links to the music player and radio onscreen. It's all reassuringly manageable.

A small design touch, to go with the asymmetrical lines, is a small hole towards the bottom of the phone, designed for a lanyard (included in-box) for those who wish to hang their 5220 rather than bagging or pocketing it.

Music player
The phone's music player can be launched and operated by a trio of buttons built into the side of the phone. In action, control symbols for these (play/pause, rewind, fast forward) are illuminated up on the edge of the phone, next to the display, and when tunes are playing they pulse along to the rhythm. Thankfully, you can switch them off.

A Nokia makes a big play about music quality on its XpressMusic handsets, it's great to see a 3.5mm headphone socket included on this budget-priced handset - allowing users to easily upgrade their earwear to better quality headphones if they want to maximise audio performance.

No mistake, this phone is capable of producing fine quality sound, with excellent range and dynamism. An average quality set of earphones is boxed with the phone, which are reasonable enough for a phone at this price level, but you'll really notice how good the music player is with a decent set of headphones.

And if you like your volume loud, you can really crank up sound on this handset, either through the 'phones or the loudspeaker. As usual for a mobile, the loudspeaker is tinny, and there's little in the bass department.

The  player interface is standard Nokia Series 40, with tracks sorted into familiar MP3 player categories (artists, albums, playlists, genres and videos), and album cover art is supported if available.

The limited 30MB of internal storage is boosted by an in-box 512MB  MicroSD memory card (up to 2GB cards are supported) that can slot into the side of the phone. More free music and audio entertainment is provided by the onboard FM radio - again, easy to set up and use.

Camera action
While the music player puts in an impressive display, the camera is a more average type of Nokia shooter. There's no autofocus or flash, limiting the flexibility and shooting capabilities of the handset, and no dedicated camera buttonry. It does its job as a snapper competently, but image quality is pretty run-of-the-mill.

Colour rendition is mostly OK, but detail is limited and not particularly refined, while indoors low light shooting isn't great. You can fiddle with white balance and a few other settings to tweak for lighting conditions, and add the usual sort of cameraphone colour effects. In addition, Nokia has included a Flickr app to upload pics directly to an online account.

With moving images captured in maximum 176x144 pixels resolutlon, video shooting is very underwhelming  - though you can also upload your own clips to Flickr if you want to.

Additional applications
Although there's no 3G to power along really speedy surfing, the inclusion of the Opera Mini browser is a real boon. As an alternative to the home-grown default Nokia browser it delivers a decent mobile internet experience, rendering pages well and negotiating sites efficiently.

Opera Mini is now one of Nokia's standard-issue pre-loaded Series 40 phone apps, as are the Nokia WidSets widgets software and Yahoo! Go - an app that combines a variety of web-based information updates, email, entertainment and location based services within one application screen. A regular Search function - using Yahoo! or Windows Live Search - are within finger reach too.

The pre-loaded Nokia Maps application enables users to look up addresses and locations, browse maps and plan routes, viewing information on onscreen maps.

Info can either be downloaded as you go along using the phone 's data connectivity (which you'll probably have to pay for), or alternatively maps can be downloaded for free to a PC from Nokia's website, and copied on to the phone's memory card (using Nokia Map Loader software and the supplied USB cable). An optional standalone Bluetooth GPS receiver can be used with the phone too, for spot-on location finding.

Nokia's staple organiser functionality is reliably present and correct - calendar, to do list, notes, clock functions, voice memo, a calculator and a world clock are all included, plus there are four games and a wallpaper creator application to play with.

Performance
As well as a decent voice call performance, the phone's power management is more than acceptable. Nokia estimates the battery will give up to 406 hours of standby time or 5.25 hours of talktime in optimum conditions, so you can expect a good few days of real life chatting and texting. Blasting out music only, Nokia reckons on 25 hours of tune-playing between recharging.

Conclusion
Rather than simply slipping out a run-of-the-mill low-cost candybar, it's good to see Nokia working a bit of a design twist into its XpressMusic budget range. Not everyone will lean towards its asymmetric look, but it does add something to the appeal of this decent but unsurprising lower range XpressMusic handset.

As a music-centric phone for price-conscious buyers, this is the sort of music mobile that's performance could very well hit the right notes. What's more, at just under £90 on Virgin Mobile pre-pay, you can pick this handset up with a set of Nokia MD-8 Mini Speakers included in-pack.

Nokia 5220 XpressMusic technical specifications