Nokia 5730 XpressMusic review

It makes economic sense to share hardware between different phone models, and a quick look at the Nokia 5730 XpressMusic may remind you of the Nokia E75. There’s a good reason; the phones are almost identical.

Nokia has taken the existing Eseries device, marketed as a serious business tool, and given it the XpressMusic treatment. It now in comes with a range of bright coloured finishes (four to choose from; grey, blue, red and purple) and a redesigned keypad and keyboard to give it a more youthful appearance.

I am not particularly keen on the dot-matrix font, which makes some of the keys rather difficult to see, especially on the Qwerty keyboard, but the bigger problem is the positioning of the important keys above the numeric keypad. Nokia has squeezed in six keys around the D-pad, and it’s quite easy to press the wrong button. No, let me rephrase that, it’s especially hard to press the right button.

Once you get used to the button arrangement, you will be glad the E75 formed the basis for this phone. It means the phone is packed with an impressive array of features and applications, including Nokia’s improved email client, N-Gage and the ability to share media from a suitably equipped PC or network drive wirelessly.

The phone has GPS, the latest version of Maps and a digital compass - so when you’re walking on foot, you’ll can keep the map facing your direction of travel, or the direction you’re facing. It took a little while to calibrate the digital compass, but once that’s done then it’s a very useful navigation tool for pedestrian usage. A further update to Maps in the future will add further functionality, including the ability to see directions to near points of interest and other ‘augmented reality’ services that are on the horizon.

However, Maps does highlight a lack of speed, with the clock rate of the ARM processor being almost half that of more modern Nokia devices, such as the E52 or the forthcoming N97 mini. It’s not ridiculously slow, but it is sluggish and a sign of S60 being placed under ever increasing demand from features like GPS navigation, large resolution imaging and video.

The 5730 doesn’t demand too much on the camera side, with just 3.2-megapixels to play with - but it has got auto focus and an LED flash and, unsurprisingly, the photos are identical to that of the E75. Good, but not amazing in a world of 5, 8 and now 12-megapixels. Video recording tops out at VGA (640x480) at 30 frames per second, which isn’t as big a gap between handsets now offering widescreen and HD modes.

The one thing I’ve yet to mention are the three subtle music keys down the left hand side of the screen. These allow instant access to the music player, along with fast forwarding and rewinding with a long press - or skipping tracks with a short press. This is a new addition over the E75, and essential to allow easy music control. As a XpressMusic phone, you can get the handset with a subscription to the Comes With Music service and enjoy free downloads of as much music as you can fit on to the supplied 8GB card. If needed, you can easily buy a 16GB card to double your storage capacity.

The home screen allows you to add contacts and show new messages and email, while there are links to Facebook available. Unlike the touchscreen models, which have a dedicated Facebook application, the link here simply takes you to the mobile web page. The screen resolution is also lower, so when you use the phone in landscape mode for the keyboard, you do begin to wish that there was a larger screen available.

As a higher-end offering than other XpressMusic models (until the touchscreen X6 arrives before Christmas), the 5730 is aimed towards users that use messaging or email regularly. It’s no iPhone killer, but Apple doesn’t even have a keypad let alone a slide-out keyboard. Until Nokia announces another music model with a keyboard, this is the best offering if you’re attracted by free and legal music downloading.