Only a year ago Nokia entered the market of touch phones, presenting the 5800 XpressMusic. Time passed and the market needed more affordable solutions optimized for finger control. One of them is Nokia 5230, presented by the Finns in August.
Touch phone Nokia 5230 will be available by the end of the year. New home screen is installed in the shell, which first appeared on Nokia 5530 XpressMusic. For the user this means a possibility of flexible configuration of interface and quick access to frequently used sources.
The indisputable advantages of Nokia 5230 is the price (in Europe – about 150 euros) and at least five colour options. Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is also sold in several color options.
Display:
The display of Nokia 5230 is similar to the one used in Nokia 5800 XpressMusic – 3.2 inch, 640 x 360 pixels, 16:9 aspect ratio, resistive. Generally, there are no differences.
Design:
The appearance of the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic can hardly be called impressive, and Nokia 5230 looks even less attractive – rugged, a lot of cheap plastic used in it. Keys of the new device are located in the same places as that of the first device, making the impression that this is the same phone. The 5230 is somehow thinner than the 5800 (16 mm and 14.5 mm respectively), although its weigh is 4 grams more (109 grams and 113 grams).
Processor:
The phone Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is equipped with ARM11 processor with a frequency of 369 MHz, while Nokia 5230 is equipped with 434-MHz ARM 11 processor. The difference of the 65 MHz is the advantage of 5230. It is assumed that due to this applications will work quicker and smarter.
Memory:
One of the serious shortcomings of the 5800 is the amount of available memory for users – 81 MB. Unfortunately, the 5230 does not have a significant amount of memory, only 70 MB. However, in both cases a microSDHC slot for cards up to 16 GB is foreseen.
Camera:
Nokia 5800 is equipped with a 3.2-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics and dual LED-flash. Nokia 5230 comes with a 2 megapixel module without flash.
Other specs:
Both smartphones have FM-radio, wireless module for Bluetooth, GPS-navigation. Both Nokia 5230 and Nokia 5800 XpressMusic support networks of second and third generations. Nokia 5800 has a Wi-Fi module, which is not available for Nokia 5230.
Conclusion:
In this case it is not easy to recommend any particular model. Practically all current Nokia touchphones (except, perhaps, N900) are created like 5800 XpressMusic –some features have been added or removed, the corpus has been slightly retouched. Such a strategy can not be considered to be successful, because the user has to choose if he/she needs to take the base model 5800 XpressMusic or to save money, taking the 5230 without Wi-Fi or 5530 XpressMusic without GPS. A choice could be made based on the design, but the phones are too much alike. There are alternatives for bar form factor Nokia touchphones (N97 and N97 mini), but the difference in price is too much to consider it a fair competition.
There is no sense for the owners of 5800 XpressMusic to take 5230 for the sake of productivity and bold colors. Buyers should pay attention to the new Nokia 5230 if they want budget sensory decision, but they don’t like products of Samsung or LG – South Korean companies have presented very strong touch-lines in recent years.
Specifications of Nokia 5230:
- Network: GSM / GPRS / EDGE (850/900/1800/1900 MHz), WCDMA / HSDPA (900/2100 MHz),
- Platform: Symbian OS v9.4, S60 5th Edition
- Display: touchscreen, resistive, 3.2-inch, 640 x 360 pixels, 16 million colours
- Camera: 2 MP
- RAM: 128 MB
- ROM: 256 MB
- Processor: ARM 11 434 MHz
- Expansion slot: microSDHC (up to 16 GB)
- Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR
- Accelerometer
- A-GPS
- 3.5-mm connector
- Audio: AAC, AAC +, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, AU, AWB, eAAC +, M4A, MIDI Tones (poly 64), Mobile XMF, MP3, MP4, RealAudio 7, 8, RMF, SND, SP-MIDI, True tones, WAV, WMA, WVE
- Video: 3GPP (H.263), Flash Video, H.264/AVC, MPEG-4, RealVideo 7,8
- Images: BMP, EXIF, GIF87a, GIF89a, JPEG, JPEG 2000, MBM, OTA, PNG, TIFF, WBMP, WMF
- Battery: 1320 mAh
- Hours Talk Time: Up to 7 hours
- Hours Standby time: up to 19 days
- Time running video player: up to 4.6 hours
- Time running music player: up to 33 hours
- Dimensions: 111 x 51,7 x 14,5 mm
- Weight: 113 grams
- Date of announcement: August 2009
- Release Date: Fourth quarter 2009
Specifications Nokia 5800 XpressMusic:
- Network: GSM / GPRS / EDGE (850/900/1800/1900 MHz), WCDMA / HSDPA (900/2100 MHz),
- Platform: Symbian OS v9.4, S60 5th Edition
- Display: touchscreen, resistive, 3.2-inch, 640 x 360 pixels, 16 million colors
- Camera: 3.2 megapixels, Carl Zeiss, autofocus, dual LED-flash
- Built in memory: 81 MB
- Processor: ARM 11 369 MHz
- Expansion slot: microSDHC (up to 16 GB)
- Wi-Fi (802.11 b / g)
- Bluetooth 2.0, A2DP
- 3,5 mm jack
- USB 2.0
- FM-radio
- Battery: Li-Ion, 1320 mAh
- Hours of talk time: up to 9 hours in the networks of GSM, up to 5 hours in WCDMA
- Hours Standby time: up to 17 days
- Time running playing music: up to 35 hours
- Time running video: up to 5 hours
- Dimensions: 111 x 51,7 x 15,5 mm
- Weight: 109 grams
Popularity: 2% [?]
