Nokia 5300 XpressMusic

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Features
There's a lot to talk about when it comes to the 5300's features, but we'll get the basics out of the way first. There's a large 1,000-contact phone book with room in each entry for five phone numbers plus a PTT number, e-mail and Web addresses, a job title and a company name, work and home street addresses, a birth date, a nickname, a formal name, and notes (the SIM card holds an additional 250 names). You can organize callers into groups or pair them with a photo for caller ID purposes. For a music phone, the choice of polyphonic ring tones was small--you get just 10, 64-chord tones--but they're assignable to contacts as well. Other standard offerings include a vibrate mode, text and multimedia messaging, a voice recorder, e-mail and instant messaging, an alarm clock, a calendar, a to-do list, a notepad, a calculator, a countdown timer, and a stopwatch.

Despite the music focus, the 5300 comes with a raft of business features including full Bluetooth with a stereo profile, an infrared port, a speakerphone, PC syncing, a mini-USB port and a unit/currency converter for international travelers. Support for push-to-talk networks is also onboard, but since the phone is unlocked, you may not be able you use it with your carrier's PTT services. For example, Cingular typically doesn't allow unlocked phones access to its PTT network. Though the 5300 comes with a Micro SD card slot that supports cards up to 2GB in size, the internal memory is a skimpy 5MB of shared space. True, you're more likely to use a memory card for storing multimedia files, but we still think 5MB is much too small for this caliber of phone.

Now, it's on to the 5300's star attraction: its superior music player. Though a lot of cell phones have experimented with mobile music, few of them get it right, beyond the Sony Walkman phones. But the Nokia 5300 has everything we look for a in such a phone--there's stereo Bluetooth and a large selection of features, it's easy to transfer files to the phone, it's user-friendly with a simple interface and well-designed controls, it has few restrictions, it offers plenty of memory, and last, but certainly not least, it offers exceptional sound quality over stereo speakers. The player supports, MP3, AAC, AAC+, and WMA files.

As previously mentioned, the 5300 has large and tactile controls that give easy access to the media player. With a press of the exterior Play button, you can play your tunes; another press stops the player. While that method will open the player in a minimized form, you can access the full interface by going through the main menu. On that note, the player's design is minimalist, but it's still attractive and easy to use. It displays the track name and length, artist, and album name, while an icon mimicking the navigation toggle indicates how you can use it to control the player. Features include shuffle and repeat modes, stereo widening, an equalizer with five settings (two are customizable), an airplane mode, and the option of saving tracks as ring tones. And we're especially happy to report there's stereo Bluetooth as well. Please see below for an explanation of the player's performance.

	The 5300's camera lacks a flash, unfortunately.

The 5300 has an first-rate 1.3-megapixel camera that takes JPEG pictures in six resolutions: 1,280x1,024; 1,290x960; 800x600; 640x480; 320x240; and 160x120. You get a variety of camera settings including three quality modes, five color effects, a note mode, a 10-second self-timer, a sequence mode for shooting three photos in rapid succession, adjustable white balance, and an 8X zoom. The only thing missing is a brightness setting, but we're willing to overlook that omission. And as for camera sounds, you can turn them off but you can't choose a particular shutter tone. The aforementioned camera ergonomics and the slick camera interface make for a great user experience.

The camcorder shoots 3GPP videos in two resolutions (176x144 and 129x96) with sound. Other options are similar to the still camera, and you can mute the sound if you wish. The default mode lasts just 6 seconds, but you can also shoot longer clips, depending on the available memory. Image quality was pretty good for a 1.3-megapixel camera phone. Object outlines were distinct, but colors were somewhat faded. Video clips were fine--a bit grainy, as expected, but suitable for short clips. Besides saving photos to the phone, you can also send them via Bluetooth or a multimedia message or use the USB cable to transfer them to a computer for printing.

	The 5300 had decent image quality.

You can personalize the 5300 with a large variety of screensavers, wallpapers, themes, color styles, animations, and sounds. Gamers get Java (J2ME) support, but your choice of included titles will vary. We found Snake III, Pro Snowboard, and Music Guess on our test phone. The latter title asks you to match the tunes with the song on your playlist.

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