First impression would suggest the Nokia 5320 XpressMusic is nothing more than a funky but affordable mid-range music phone aimed at the sonic youth. But dig deeper and you’ll discover this candybar harbours some sweet features beyond the call of duty, including a Symbian Series 60 smartphone OS, support for N-Gage gaming and quirky ‘Say and Play’ music controls.
Sitting above the Nokia 5310 and below the Nokia 5800 touch-phone in the Nokia XpressMusic food chain, the 5320 reveals its mid-range colours with a plastic build. It’s solid and compact enough but its overly glossy finish cheapens its look and feel.
The striking numeric keypad arrangement has been re-designed to accommodate two-handed N-Gage gaming and while the layout appears strange, it’s actually fine to thumb. The same, however, can’t be said of the five-way navigation pad that proved a slippery customer when selecting via the middle button. Otherwise, the 5320 is generally use-friendly.
Unfortunately, the 5320 isn’t a full paid member of the manufacturer’s Come With Music all-you-can-eat download service but it’s still got a wealth of musical talents to gorge on. With sizeable dedicated side keys the music player is accessible and easily controlled, although the Say and Play feature – press the top dedicated media key, call out a song, artist or album name and the player will show and spin related tracks – is very hit and miss and frankly not worth the hassle.
Audio quality is surprisingly meaty and detailed, especially when you plug in your own quality earphone via the 3.5mm headphone jack. Storage could be an issue for some with only a 1GB memory card bundled. It can handle high capacity microSD cards, so investing in an 8GB card is essential if the 5320 is to become your number one portable music player.
We would love to say the HSDPA-enabled 5320 is also a top gaming phone but a technical glitch meant we couldn’t get N-Gage games to load. And this wasn’t the only disappointment with the two-megapixel camera and QVGA-quality video capture found lacking.
Verdict
On paper, the 5320’s promised much but its performance in some departments failed to deliver. But if you want a dynamic sounding music phone with added smartphone skills then you should definitely demo this phone.
Best features
Affordable and compact Symbian smartphone
Great sounding music player
Integrated 3.5mm headphone jack
Not so good
No support for Comes With Music service
Say and Play feature is hit and miss
Navigation controls proved awkward to use
Average camera and video capture
Check out our Nokia 5320 XpressMusic gallery:
Closest rivals
Sony Ericsson W980
Sony Ericsson deserve praise for fitting a generous 8GB dollop of internal memory and front dedicated Walkman music player controls into this compact clamshell.
Nokia 5310 XpressMusic
Despite being the 5320’s younger XpressMusic bro the 5310 is still an attractive proposition with a slimline profile, dedicated music controls and an integrated 3.5mm headphone jack.
HTC Touch Diamond
Stylish looks and powered by a Windows Mobile engine, this touch-loving smartphone has 4GB worth of internal memory to store about 1,000 average-sized MP3 tracks.
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