14 DAY TRIAL // Since Sony Ericsson launched its Walkman series, many rival brands tried to develop similar series that would ultimately win the supremacy on the music phones market. Nokia even launched two such series: Xpress Music and Music Edition. While the latter comprises reshaped old models which were given high-end music capabilities (Nokia N70, Nokia N73 and Nokia N91), Xpress Music series includes only newly developed models (Nokia 3250, Nokia 5300 and Nokia 5700). Moreover, both series launched by Nokia were so good that they started competing against each other. Nokia 5700 Xpress Music is the latest handset launched from its series, thus it should be the best in its class. Again, the phone's real competitors can be found only among models of the same brand: Nokia 3250 and Nokia N91.
Announced at the end of March 2007, the handset has been made available on the market starting April 2007. Because the handset's sales package contains 512 MB/ 1 GB microSD memory card, the price may vary between USD 370-470, also depending on the location.
Design
Nokia 5700 Xpress Music model doesn't look too stylish, but the moment you start using it you'll discover plenty of other features that will pleasantly surprise you. If you remember Nokia 3250, just imagine that this is a sequel that greatly resembles its predecessor. While it may look like a simple bar phone, Nokia 5700 is in fact a swivel handset that rotates its keypad to the left or to the right, depending on what features you would like to use. Its measures (108 x 50 x 17 mm) and weight (115 grams, including battery) make it rather hefty than light and slim.
Seen from the front, the phone presents itself like a regular bar with the volume keys hidden under a black rubber on the left side and the rest of the ports (miniUSB, charge port and microSD memory card slot) placed on the right side of the phone covered by a long rubber band. Also right on the bottom of the left side, you'll notice the 2 Megapixel camera that features flash capabilities. On top of the phone, there's the usual power button, while on the bottom you can notice the 2.5mm jack port. The keypad of the phone features only 2 specific Symbian keys which are placed above the keypad. There's no Edit key included in this model, so you'll have to do without it. The 5-way joystick is very solid, but also very hard to use.
The 2 stereo speakers are placed on the top left and on the bottom right side of the phone, but if you swivel the keypad to the right 180 degrees to access the music player, both speakers will be on the same left side. If you don't swivel the keyboard, you'll find the music controls on the back of the phone. The back of the phone is made from a cheap plastic that is easy to break, so watch out. Besides the rubber material used on both sides of the phone, the top and bottom of the handset are made from a polished shiny plastic, very nice to the touch. The swivel mechanism is very robust and won't break even after heavy use.
The sales package is rich in accessories and contains microSD memory card (512 MB or 1 GB) and stereo wired headsets made by Philips.
Display and Camera
Nokia 5700 Xpress Music features a much better display than Nokia 3250 does, and together with the high speed CPU, it offers a great gaming experience. The TFT display supports 16 Million colors and resolutions up to 240 x 320 pixels. As you can see from the screenshots, the phone is only a little bit superior to Nokia N76 (which features the same CPU) and LG KU580.
Because of the high probability of scratches, I recommend using an "invisible shield" to protect your screen. As always, graphic display hits high scores when tested only if the handset features a good processor and Nokia 5700 demonstrates it.
The screen is visible in the sunlight and can be used with no trouble. There's also a light sensor right near the in-call speaker which adjusts the backlighting level in accordance with the environment.
The swivel mechanism enables the users to shoot pictures or clips with ease, by turning the keypad 90 degrees to the right. Evidently, you can take pictures even if you don't swivel the handset. Video calls are limited because the phone lacks a secondary camera. The phone has zoom capabilities that you can access through the 5-way joystick or the music player controls Forward and Back. While not the best in its class, the 2 Megapixel camera embedded can take nice pictures, but only if the light conditions are extremely good. Otherwise, the images are full of noise, no matter the resolutions used.
The flash and the night mode are useless, so don't try to take pictures when it's dark outside. The maximum resolution for pictures is 1600 x 1200 pixels, while movies can be recorded in 320 x 240 pixels (.mp4 format).
There are also three White balance settings that you can use (Sunny, Incandescent and Fluorescent) and 3 Color tones (Sepia, Black&White and Negative). The picture quality is above average only if you take pictures when the light is very good; otherwise, they look very bad.
Menu and Software
Nokia 5700 Xpress Music runs the latest Symbian 9.2 version OS and includes Feature Pack 1. The 3.1 interface proves to be very stable on the 5700 model and is the most user-friendly. The Feature Pack 1 provides 3D graphics hardware support, over-the-air (OTA) firmware support, Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR support, Flash Lite 2.0, as well as a better organization of the file cache. The Alarm clock function has been modified, thus you are being able to use multiple repeating alarms, while the time limit for voice recording has been improved from 1 minute to 1 hour. After numerous tests and benchmarks run during 1 week, Nokia 5700 performed admirably. While there are some people that are "complaining" that their phones are restarting themselves, it only happened to me once when I tried to access many functions in a short period of time. Even if it happens 4 times per month, this is not much for a Symbian phone. Let's not forget that this handset has an operating system, which sometimes may freeze (never happened to me) or simply restart itself.
Besides the usual FP1 theme, Nokia 5700 features some unique musical themes, that not only change the wallpaper and background, but also the ringtones used. If you are more into the theme thing, Audio Theme can change even the sound alerts for calendar, alarm or various notifications. Surprisingly enough, you won't be able to play 3D Snake on Nokia 5700 (thank God), but you'll still be able to play one of the 2 embedded games: Marble and City Bloxx. In the Videos section, you'll find a bunch of clips that were included onto the handset free of charge.
There's a new OSS Browser 2.0 integrated which is only compatible with Symbian 3rd Edition handsets. It seems that Nokia gave up on the Opera browser and started to develop its own software that will probably be called Nokia Browser. The new upgraded browser does wonders for all users that are heavy Internet surfers. Besides the fact that you can now open multiple new windows, you can also navigate among up to 5 pages. You can save pages for later offline navigation and you can zoom any web page. Overall, the new Nokia Browser is more stable and much faster. Even big web pages are handled quickly and with very few errors.
Communication
Even if this is a handsets designed for music lovers, it still embeds the latest communication technologies such as: GPRS Class 32, EDGE Class 32, HSCSD (43.2 kbps) and 3G (384 kbps). Tests revealed that Nokia 5700 Xpress can be one of the best choices for those that are using Internet or data transfers heavily. With up to 311 Kbit/s download and 314 Kbit/s upload when using 3G technology, Nokia 5700 scored in as one of the best 3G handset. EDGE connectivity only managed a mediocre score of up to 141 Kbit/s download and 85 Kbit/s upload data transfer speeds.
The phone supports Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP and EDR; still, I was surprised to attain 105 KB/s data transfer speeds. The miniUSB cable will enable users to synchronize their contacts or simply to make data transfers between the phone and PC. Unfortunately, the phone doesn't charge itself when connected to the PC through the miniUSB cable. Messaging capabilities include IMAP4, POP3 and SMTP email account compatibility, as well as "Push to Talk" and Instant Messaging. The phone lacks push email, but this is a multimedia handset, so there?s no need for that. There are also GPS applications preinstalled on the handset, but no GPS chipset included.
The quad-band GSM (UMTS / GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900) network compatible handset has a strong reception of the signal when you're setting the network on GSM mode. This will also preserve some of the battery energy. The conversation sound is crystal clear and very loud, so you won't have any troubles when having a phone talk in any environment.
Processor and Memory
Nokia 5700 features the same processor as N76 model, an ARM11 CPU running at 369 MHz speeds. The operating system works like a charm thanks to this powerful processor, being also very stable. There are no lags when loading third-party Java or Symbian applications; on the contrary, the handset is very speedy.
The phone embeds only 40 MB internal memory, but features a microSD slot card for memory expansion up to 4GB. There's also a 512 MB or 1 GB microSD memory card included in the shipping package.
Multimedia
As Nokia mentioned, this new 5700 Xpress Music model features a separate CPU that processes the sound, just like the older N91 model. The integrated audio chip enables the handset to offer users a "crystal clear Hi-Fi sound quality" and "Hi-Fi sound with built-in stereo loudspeakers". While sound on loudspeakers is one of the best, only second to N91, it still isn't a Hi-Fi quality, which means that the song played should be heard almost at the same quality as the original. I should place Nokia 5700 Xpress Music loudspeaker sound right after the N91 and Nokia 3250, because it lacks a higher volume and the sound is somewhat flat. Otherwise, it's no better than Nokia 5700 and 3250 loudspeakers sound pretty much the same, but the latter has higher volume. Anyway, that largely depends on what equalizer mode you're using. In terms of earphone and built-in speakers, Nokia 5700 again fails to outrun the N91 and quality nears and even surpasses the 3250 model. The latter comes from the fact that Nokia 5700 Xpress Music has been shipped with much better earphones than its 3250 predecessor. But if you use the same earphones or headphones, Nokia 3250 might sound a little bit richer and has more bass. If I were to buy a music phone and have to choose between Nokia 3250 and Nokia 5700 it would be a very difficult choice indeed.
I have found that Nokia 5700 sound quality may vary greatly when using the equalizer, so if you like to experience with it you'll discover that it really makes the vibes vibrate when the right settings are made. The music player is the same as in almost all S60 handsets and can read MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA format files. It includes various functions such as equalizer (only 4 presets, but you can also make you own settings), stereo widening and loudness.
Still, I don't recommend using the latter because it will simply lower the quality of the sound. You can also use pre-installed flash clips or new ones found in album art as visualization effects. The FM radio can save up to 50 stations and can be used with the earphones. Reception and sound for the radio are excellent.
Battery
Unlike Nokia 3250 that features a 1100 mAh Li-Ion battery, Nokia 5700 Xpress Music has been given a "lower" 900 mAh Li-Polymer battery which seems to be more efficient. It takes about 2 hours for full charging and about 9 hours and 40 minutes of music playback till the battery runs dry. During the music playback the display was inactive, but I have used the phone for about 20-25 minutes of talking. If I could extrapolate, the battery should give you more than 10 hours of music playback or around 4-5 hours of talking. The BP-5M battery suits perfectly the profile of the phone, offering long playback time and adequate talking time.
Impressions
Even if the phone didn't quite impress me at first through its design, the moment I started using it I was pleasantly surprised. There's no other Nokia handset that works that fast and with no crashes. I'm not too much into the music thing, but Nokia 5700 impressed me through its vibes. This a very good move from Nokia which managed to mix the functionality of its operating system with the exceptionally good multimedia experience.
The Good
Nokia 5700 has been masterfully developed by the Finnish company and excels in all chapters. It has good sound, good signal reception, exceptional operating system, excellent connectivity tools, powerful CPU and above average battery. Furthermore, all the above come for a cheap price as the phone can be acquired for around USD 400 in most countries.
The Bad
The only thing that I think it?s worth mentioning is the 5-way joystick which is very hard to handle and the mediocre 2 Megapixel camera. There's always place for better, but Nokia 5700 Xpress Music doesn't seem to have any important flaws that we should complain about.
Sales package
Nokia 5700 Xpress Music handset 900 mAh Li-Pol battery (BP-5M) Charger (AC-5) Wired stereo-headset and remote control (HS-44 / AD-44) microSD memory card (512 MB / 1 GB) USB data cable CD ROM with Nokia PC Suite User Guide
Photo: Tudor Raiciu for Softpedia.com