Review: Nokia 5730 XpressMusic

Picture the scene at Nokia‘s ante-natal centre: the E75 is delivered, kicking, into this world. Along with its twin, which is quickly removed and brought up in another culture. This then becomes the 5730 XpressMusic. Under the hood, much of it is identical to the E75, yet there’s plenty that’s different or new. Not least the fact that it’s £100 cheaper (comparing original launch prices, at least).

The overall form factor’s the same, of course, Nokia’s rather solid and reliable take on the side-sliding qwerty smartphone. The screen still seems small for 2009, at only 2.4”, but within the context of a candy bar that transforms into a keyboarded communicator, the size is understandable.

There’s a metal surround and metal sub-frame, but everything else is stylised plastic, partly accounting for the 5730 being 4g lighter, despite being 1mm wider and thicker than the E75. The translucent panels work well in spot lights (e.g. at a pub or club) and the dot matrix font on the keypad and qwerty keyboard, awkward in daylight, also comes alive when backlit.

The most obvious changes are the control keys, with the S60 and ‘C’ keys (somewhat awkwardly) raised and with the E75′s application shortcuts replaced by screen-side-mounted media controls – these work well for music, podcasts and videos, though you have to learn where each is if you want to operate them in a pocket, since there are no detents. Having hardware music control while in other applications is a major bump in functionality for a phone and this alone may persuade some that this is the device to go for.

Also new are two ‘gaming’ keys above the screen. These get activated by the N-Gage application and work well as gaming keys ‘A’ and ‘B’ in almost all N-Gage games. They’re certainly more convenient than fiddling with the numeric keys.

Most of the other hardware changes relate to the 5730′s rear. An unnecessarily bowed plastic battery cover smothers the 5730′s loudspeaker, with no grille, rather annoyingly. We ended up taking our Dremel to it and sound output was suitably improved!

The camera looks identical to that in the E75 but is in fact upgraded, with Carl Zeiss optics, producing slightly better colours and sharper detail. Knowing that the E75′s camera was already terrific and that this is even better, can only be a big win for the 5730.

Inside, the main electronics change is that the GPS has been upgraded, adding a digital compass, although the launch firmware doesn’t include a way to take advantage of this. Thankfully, applying the free upgrade to Ovi Maps 3 immediately shows up the compass in good light and sensitivity seems excellent. No doubt Ovi Maps 3 and Ovi Store (to name but two S60 staples) will arrive, built-in, in the first major firmware upgrade for the 5730.

There’s a big split in terms of software, compared to the E75 – gone are the editing version of Quickoffice, the dual mode homescreen and the enterprise utilites (e.g. ‘Intranet’). In their place comes a rather marvellous contact-based homscreen, combining all your favourite people, your favourite applications and your chosen plug-ins, all on the one screen.

Picking a contact gives you quick access to ways to reach them, in addition to their latest status updates from the likes of Twitter and Facebook. If this sounds too joined up for Nokia then you’d be right – setting up these updates is fiddly and a wizard or set-up utility is sorely needed.

Also present on the software side are ‘Speak to play’ music searching, the full Nseries Photos (and videos) carousel and editing facility, plus a clutch of social networking shortcuts and widgets, though compared to their equivalents in the likes of Palm’s WebOS, these seem rather primitive.

Nokia’s Swiss Army Knife smartphone just got itself some new gadgets.

Technical specs
Operating system: Symbian OS 9, S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2
Processor: ARM 369MHz
Memory: 128MB RAM; 256MB ROM
Dimensions: 112 x 51 x 15mm
Weight: 135g
Display size: 2.4”
Display resolution: 240 by 320
Expansion slot: 1 x microSD (8GB supplied)

Essential Verdict
Performance: 9/10
Design: 7/10
Features: 9/10
Value for Money: 8/10
Overall score: 9/10

Written by Steve Litchfield. Originally published in Smartphone Essentials magazine.

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