Nokia 5530 XpressMusic mini-review

Nokia 5530 XpressMusic is a slim, light and cheap Symbian smartphone. Jennifer have had this for the past four months and according to her, it is an excellent replacement to her cheap and cheerful Nokia 5310 XM. It has no 3G on board (not a huge issue to her), but it does have built-in WiFi.

The Good
- Cheap!
- High resolution screen (360x640 pixels) with good clarity outdoors.
- Slim and light (107g) modern design. It fits your palm perfectly. Easily the slimmest smartphone with a touchscreen I've ever used.
- Sync'able address book, calendar, task list and memos with Outlook.
- Incredibly good audio quality (with a proper headphone or IEM)
- microSD card slot is compatible with high capacity microSDHC - works with 16GB card, possibly 32GB, also hot-swappable.
- Industrial standard 3.5mm headphone.
- WiFi 802.11b/g, Quad-band GSM, Bluetooth 2.0 EDR+ (with A2DP), IrDA and USB 2.0 connectivity.
- 3.2MP camera with 30fps VGA video recording. The quality is similar to the Nokia E55, but with the added advantage of auto focus and macro focusing.
- Support for USB mass storage (MTP and UMS).
- Appealing and youthful design.
- Has an accelerometer for switching orientations, silencing calls and snoozing alarms.
- Whilst made of plastic, the build quality is excellent.
- Battery life is pretty good. It can last several days with moderate usage.
- I actually prefer the resistive screen technology used here, but I do know there are capacitive screen fanboys who would disagree.
- No crappy N97-like widget-based homescreen. As a widget hater, this is a huge positive in my books.
- Removable battery, duh.

The Average
- Series 60 5th Edition isn't as mature as S60v3.
- Battery life is average lasting 2-3 days per charge with light text, calls and music playback.
- Average processor speed, which is slower than my E55, but the same speed as the pricier N97/N97 Mini.
- Only 20+MB available RAM on boot. Not a disaster, but power users on a budget will be left wanting.
- A 4GB microSD card is included.

The Bad
- No front camera means no free video calling via Skype.
- Symbian^3 unlikely to be made available for this, if Nokia's track record is anything to go by.
- No built-in GPS, but you can't really argue at this price point.
- Firmware updates has been rare.

Camera samples:



f/2.8, ISO 224, 1/20 sec (default with flash)



f/2.8, ISO 239, 1/20 sec (macro mode)



f/2.8, ISO 276, 1/8 sec (night mode)



f/2.8, ISO 74, 1/500 sec (macro mode)



f/2.8, ISO 97, 1/1000 sec



f/2.8, ISO 97, 1/1000000 sec

Verdict

The 5530 may seem like a 'my first smartphone' phone, but it is surprisingly versatile and works just as well for power users. Mind you this isn't her first smartphone (she had a HTC Magician once, and has plenty of experience with plenty of Palm and Sony Clie PDAs). If she is happy with it (and she is), I think Nokia succeeded. The 5530 XM is the perfect smartphone for people on the budget or who see little points in paying £150 for a smartphone. In fact she can do plenty of things on this (twitter, e-mail, gaming, music, videos etc.) that other more expensive rivals (including those by Nokia themselves) can do as well. A snip at £89.

The biggest issue with this is the lack of maturity with the Symbian S60 5th Edition platform. Whilst I am a huge fan of S60v3 (the UI on modern none-touchscreen Symbian phones), and quite like the UI on S60v5, it just isn't quite there yet. Yes I do know about the upcoming Symbian^3, but it is very unlikely that Nokia will make Symbian^3 available on the 5530. Their track records says so. Despite that there are plenty of third party applications for the platform and we've had no problems sourcing freewares to fill in the missing features that Nokia has failed to include.

The 5530 XpressMusic is a capable cheap smartphone platform with plenty of power for users to take advantage of. For £89 (the price we paid back in December) unlocked from the Carphone Warehouse, it is a bargain.

Nokia E55 gets v33?

According to AAS, a new firmware is available for the Nokia E55, taking it from v31 to v33. It is apparently "available widely for all unbranded handsets" - those are the words of AAS BTW. Which is obviously a stupid statement to make (have they checked?). There has been no firmware updates for my unlocked and unbranded UK E55, and I've checked using OTA (*#0000#) and also via Nokia Software Updater. In fact the more than a month old v31 isn't even available for my E55!

AAS needs to stop spouting nonsense and speculations as facts. Just because their review units are capable of receiving updates does not mean ours can. What does this lack of firmware updates for UK phones mean? Well it means Nokia UK are really made up by a bunch of truly incompetent people who hates the customers who feeds them.

But what this really and truly means is that my next Symbian smartphone may just be a Sony Ericsson.

23/03/2010 update:

Gosh, that was quick. NSU just picked up the v33 update, thus bypassing v31 altogether. I am downloading it as we speak (it is a massive 152.2MB in size). Ovi Maps 3.3 in ROM is going to be lovely.

Nokia E55 gets v31 firmware update (allegedly)

If various online reports are to be believed, both the Nokia E55 and E52 has received firmware updates thus putting the software version at 031.012 - up from the previous v21. The 7MB update, which is said to contain bug fixes rather than new features, is allegedly be live via OTA (over the air).



Not surprisingly Nokia Care UK, and their unnamed outsourced UK-based third party support and service partner, has yet to make available the update for UK destined unbranded sim-free E55. I have tried updating this morning but to no luck. I made a mistake last month of applying the v22 update which caused my then super stable E55 to something that is a bit less stable, so I am quite anxious to try out v31.

My top 10 Symbian applications

So I thought I would compile a list of my favourite (or 'killer') mobile applications that I frequently use on my Nokia E55 and post it here. And I came up with ten of these. Hopefully this post will be useful to someone who is new to the Symbian platform. Despite the use of S60v3 screenshots, I believe that all of these are also available in Symbian S60v5 (Symbian^1) touchscreen forms as well.

Gravity (commercial)



Gravity is probably the only Symbian twitter client worth considering for 'power' users. Features includes list supports, drafts, favourites, picture posting (including scaling), RT, URL shortening, delete tweets, user search, scheduled tweets, basic geolocation etc. Not only that, it also supports basic Facebook, Google Reader and Statusnet. With such a massive list of feature you would expect Gravity to perform poorly, but no, it is quick, have a sleek and intuitive UI all in a package requiring less than 400KB of space. Nokia, quickly hire this guy.

Alternative: TweetS60, Twittix

Foreca Weather (commercial)



I've tried many different weather applications on my Symbian device and the only one to cut the mustard is Foreca. Spb Weather may have a sleeker interface, but Foreca trumps it with the amount of information it downloads (scalable obviously). It supports up to 10 days of forecast (not much use in this country where the weather can change dramatically without notice), satellite images and various maps showing different information (wind directions, cloud cover etc.)

Alternative: Mobile Weather, Handy Weather, Spb Weather

Mobbler (freeware)



Mobbler is a last.fm scrobbler/streaming radio. Use it as a standalone application to listen to last.fm radio or with the default Symbian music player to scrobb your playlist. It really is that simple. The latest version supports Local File Playback which automatically plays the local file on your memory card instead of streaming online if it is available thus saving on data transfer. Scrobbling can also be done offline.

Viewranger (commercial)



Ovi Maps is one of the better routing application out there but as it is only constricted to street mapping, you'll have to look elsewhere if you ever want to venture offroad. The best out there (on any mobile platform) is Viewranger. Maps supported includes Britain's Ordnance Survey (25k and 50k), USA's NatGeo (100k and 24k), France (100k and 25k) and Germany (50k). It also supports 'pay as you go' map tiles download and a sweet panoramic feature. Any serious walker or cyclist should consider this. A more detailed review is available here.

Activefile (freeware)



Symbian's default file manager for better or worse, is a basic affair. The average user may be fine with it, but just like with Windows Explorer, power users will be left wanting. Activefile is a freeware file manager that aims to satisfy the needs of these power uses. Features includes the ability to open/send protected and hidden files, battery and memory monitors, process/task manager, sending fake SMS and backing/restoring SMS.

Alternative: Y-Browser

aRed (freeware)



aRed is a little known freeware that only offers one thing: giving the user the ability to cycle through open applications using the red (disconnect) button, much like how a Windows user uses Alt+Tab. It works in the background and can be set to start automatically on reboot.

Nokia Custom Dictionary (freeware)



Frustrated by the lack of words on your Symbian's predicted text system? Well fret no more. This new release by Nokia Beta Labs allows the user to edit the list of custom words used by the phone's predictive text system. Users can add, edit or remove words and even import/export an xml file, allowing the user to easily transfer the custom dictionary to a compatible phone. It may just be a beat release, but already it is a killer app for me.

MetrO (freeware)



I have been using various versions of MetrO since the early Palm OS days (ah the memories - Sony's NR70 was my favourite, amazing how some of its features has yet to be replicated by modern smartphones). Since then the nifty public transport (over 400 cities are supported) routing application has been ported to various mobile OS and even resides on the web. MetrO features a crude and outdated UI inherited from Palm OS, but it works well. An indispensable tool for any traveller who wishes to leave their motor vehicle behind.

Resco Photo Viewer (commercial)



Let's be honest - Nokia/Symbian default Gallery application is quite possibly the worst photo viewing application ever created - on any platforms. Whoever designed it hates humankind. Thankfully there are developers out there who recognised the Gallery application for what it is - utterly useless. Resco, whose Windows Mobile-based Photo Viewer I used a lot back in my Pocket PC days, is one of them. It supports plenty of image formats, has a built-in image editor (colour/contrast adjustment etc.) and is also much quicker to use and navigate.

Ovi Maps (freeware - on Nokia phones only)



Last but not least, Nokia's Ovi Maps. Ovi Maps supports vector mapping, satellite and terrain layers, GPS positioning and compass (on compatible phones with the necessary hardware). It supports 6-7 digit UK postcodes as well as co-ordinates input. With turn by turn voice navigation free in 76 countries, premium content by Michelin and Lonely Planet and offline access to maps from 180 countries; Ovi Maps is quite literally the killer app.

Note: whilst this is a Symbian application, it isn't compatible with none-Nokia branded Symbian smartphones - at least not officially.

Free navigation with Ovi Maps

Nokia has announced that they will be making its turn by turn voice navigation (including traffic updates and premium content like Lonely Planet guides) service on Ovi Maps for free. This service will be available in 76 countries and will tie in nicely with their already available offline feature (which allows the user to freely download maps from 180 countries through a desktop terminal thus saving on over the air data costs).

There are tens of millions of Symbian devices with GPS receiver that has some form of Nokia/Ovi Maps preinstalled (and more which are compatible). Ovi Maps 3 is the best urban navigation software I've ever used and this coming from a guy who has been a Tom Tom fan since their early Palmtop days.

The initial rollout will be made available to a selected number of devices (which includes the E55 (yay), 5800XM, N97 mini and E72) but more will be added later. When will Nokia begin the rollout is anyone's guess but the sooner the better me thinks.

Game changer this one really is.

Nokia E55 v22 firmware update

Is finally available for UK sim-free E55 - more than a month after it was released in Australia and whatever new Eastern Europe country that emerged over the past couple of years. Nice knowing how Nokia Care UK and its outsourced third party support treats its customers in the UK. On the upside at least the update is available via OTA.

Update: Well, the firmware update could not have gone smoother. Took about 3 minutes to download via OTA, apply the firmware update and for the phone to reboot. All my data and applications (including Java) has been preserved so no restore was required. So top marks to the software engineers at Espoo, but still a big boo to Nokia UK for making us wait.

Snow!

Such a shame we wouldn't be able to enjoy it as we have already booked the removals for today...

In other news, my partner recently got a Nokia 5530 XpressMusic Symbian touchscreen smartphone as a replacement to her classic 5310 XpressMusic. Despite having only played with it for less than two hours, I actualy like it and would have considered it if it wasn't for the lack of hardware keyboard. Still, it is a steal for £99 on payasyougo as it beats plenty of more expensive touchscreen none-smartphones and smartphones on features. Expect a review once everything's settled.

Opera Mini 5 & Mobile 10 beta 2 released for Symbian S60 & Windows Mobile platform

Opera has released the second public beta of Opera Mini 5 for J2ME and Mobile 10 for Symbian S60 (both S60v3 and S60v5) and Windows Mobile platform.

The biggest feature addition with beta 2 is the inclusion of Opera Link - a unique feature that allows users to synchronise their bookmarks and settings (including speed dial) with various other Opera products including their desktop web browser. Users can manage their bookmarks online at the Opera Link website. Also included is a new download manager, which works surprisingly well and allows users to pause and resume multiple downloads. It also seems to perform better and faster with low RAM devices like the N97 Mini.

If you have a compatible mobile you can download the latest versions of Opera Mini 5 beta 2 and Mobile 10 beta 2 from http://m.opera.com/next

Opera Mini 5 beta 2 on a Nokia N97 Mini:









Opera Mobile 10 beta 2 on a Nokia N97 Mini:











Opera Mobile 10 beta 2 on a Nokia E55:





Opera Mini 5 beta 2 on a Nokia E55: