I bought 5230 just last month and till now its been working really great :)
First thing I liked about 5230 is its DISPLAY :) its very big compared to Samsung corby and I have watched few movies too and its been great to watch movies in this phone. it attracted 4 people behind my seat while watching movie and they too saw movie:)
I do lot of Messaging and prev I used Sony erric basic model and I was scared how I will use touch screen for msg purpose but when I used it I didn’t find much difficulty in typing the msg. now after a month I can type very easily with the same speed as I used to type in hard keypad. So no worries for SMS :)
Next is the shortcuts which are really perfectly implemented and u can switch to any menu from any menu with ease. the thing which I liked most is Sending msg to a Dialed or received or Missed call number directly !!! and choosing MSG from any other menu just by touching top right corner it ll display the No. of SMS and Miss calls !! that’s really cool.
Music player in 5230 is really good and easy to use. I bought 8 GB Transcend MICRO SD and so far its nice. the major adv is you can create your own Equalizer !! which is very cool which is very cool thing :)
you can create your own playlist easly. and once you start playing Music if you are in home screen you will get small play pause, next, prev screen which is quite usefull to skip songs and mange it as required.
the Default headset which comes with 5230 doesnt provide much stereo sound so I bought new Earphone Music Headset (HS-45, AD-54) which is of Nokia 5800 model’s deafulat headset which produces really great Quality audio compared to 5230 earphone. the major adv of new Headset is you can PLAY, PAUSE, NEXT, PREV songs with the Headset control !!
Video Player is really great and you can enjoy video lot :) :)
The battery backup is really good for me it ll come around 1.5 days for 2 hours of MP3 +100SMS+30Min video+1hr Games etc.. !! Wow isnt it !!!
Regarding 3G I am waiting for Vodafone to upgrade to 3G then I believe I wont need WIFI connection as i ll be getting 1 MBPS speed with 3G :). the Internet Browsing is Good and user friendly so -ve I have found so far. my friends told me that WIFI is very much req and you go for 5800 but I don’t think wifi is that imp if you have 3G in phone because no one will download movies from mobile phone!! so just browsing purpose 3G will be more than enough that’s my understanding and I hope I am correct.
Camera is 2MP is good for OUTDOOR and INDOOR with Good light and the Max zoom in Indoor leads to little Noisy pics which is the only concern other than its just ok. flash unit is missing here. the phone also provide nice IMAGE EDITING S/W which is quite easy and fast in operation & have little nice options too.
The Phone book is far better and easy to handle compared to samsung corby which I found little time consuming and complex.5230 offers handwriting recognition which is quite cool to try out.FM Radio Clarity is really good and the background interface has been really eye catching and nicely implemented.
Still exploring lot of functions and installing some apps from OVI Stores and few websites like:
https://cell9.net, https://dotsis.com, https://nokiasoftware.net
Overall I am very satisfied with 5230 Worth paying for it.
Most of the People in Nokia Show rooms say that 5230 has been stopped due to complaints and problems but its just marketing strategy so don’t listen to them just buy it. for 8k you are getting good touch phone with fully loaded apps and Great audio so just go for it.
Note: till now I have not updated the mob Firmware as I saw nokia blog where people posting issues in ph after updating firmware but if some one has updated the firmware and working fine just let me know.
Finally the Price List:
-->Nokia 5230: 8000Rs(Jaynagar 4th Block Bangalore) + Reebok Bag (offer) + 1 YEAR WARRANTY
-->8 GB Transcend M.sd: 860( S.P Road, B’lore) + 5 YR Warranty