So, this is my third mobile review at mouthshut and in my previous reviews I’m happy about my mobile. And even this time I’m not disappointing by my purchase. Well, today I’m reviewing the **Nokia 5130 XpressMusic.
*This time I was looking for a budget mobile, and so while searching on net, I got struck by the sight of this mobile. When I saw the features, price and read reviews I was quite pleased with it. So on a fine morning, oh sorry, fine night I went to the shop and bought this nokia thingy. I also looked for some other mobiles such as SE W302, S302 and G502 before the purchase but I didn’t get a chance to see the first two since they were not present in the shop to which I went. And the third one was, of course, a bit costly.
But actually I consider myself lucky that I didn’t got to see these mobiles because it was long time since I made a nokia purchase and that too was when I purchased a simple and basic coloured mobile. So I got a good chance to try nokia multimedia mobiles personally. According to many reviews on MS people are not happy with this cell. I don’t know whats the reason behind their dissapointment but I liked the phone very much. Let me tell you one by one about the main points of this mobile which one looks before buying.
Design and Construction: So lets start with the build and looks. The Nokia 5130 is made of good quality plastic which gives a great shiny metal finish feeling. The display is very good, atleast according to me cause it looks bright and clear. On the left side there are the dedicated music keys and on the right is the volume rocker which is a bit difficult to operate without looking since the buttons are not raised enough. I’m surprised that all the ports are situated on the top. Well even though I like the design a lot I would say Nokia guys are not that good in mobile designing as compared to others. The design of this one also could have been much better and especially the colours. I’m saying this because I purchased a black and silver model and it has the back panel as grey in colour. Now who likes that colour with black and silver? I don’t know what was in their mind!!!! I wish that the back panel was in rich black. The keypad is good.
User Interface: As I already said that I was purchasing a nokia multimedia mobile for the first time and so didn’t know much about the interface. But I had operated some N series ones before. And believe me I liked the UI of this one better than that of N series. This phone has a really great UI of the familiar S40 style. Its easy and simple to operate and I like the graphics and animations a lot. And of course if you don’t like the pre-installed themes you can download other ones from the net.
Music: The music is also awesome. I liked the speaker quality to a great extent. There is the usual XpressMusic player with some equalizer presets. One thing I liked a lot was that you can apply themes even to the music player. The same goes with the FM radio. The radio is not something very great to talk about. Its just for normal listening. The sound through the earphones is also decent. If you don’t like those cords hanging near your body you can listen to music through bluetooth handsfree since A2DP profile is supported. There is even a 3.5mm jack which is the standard jack for headphones and earphones so you can plug in your favourite headphones.
Camera: According to me, the camera is also good. Its a normal 2 megapixel camera with neither flash nor auto focus. But still the images are very good. Of course, they are not the best seen in 2 megapixel camera phones but they are good enough for storing some of your precious memories. I would rate it 8.5 out of 10. But wish it had flash. Since I wrote about the LG Cookie in my previous review, which had a very dissapointing camera although being of 3MP, I was very happy to get back a good camera mobile. Believe me the camera of lg cookie was too bad compared to 5130. It did not have zoom, no flash, no autofocus, no contrast or colours in pictures. Anyways, lets get back to nokia.The video camera is not a feature that you can boast about since there is QCIF recording at 15fps.So I would say again the camera is a very good one but don’t think it’s the best one out there.
Other Features: The application included are very common ones. Pre-installed games are not very entertaining but you can surely download some applications and games from some good sites. There is gprs and edge and an Opera Mini browser pre-installed. But there is a lack of 3g if you want high speed, but we should not forget about the price tag. There is a microSD slot which is capable of handling 16 gb cards. A 1 gig card comes with the retail package which come with some bollywood songs but they are not the latest ones. And of course there is bluetooth v2.0. There are some music lights near the music keys which light up to the rythym of the music playing but if you dont like them you can switch them off. There is micro USB but the usb cable given is too short.
Conclusion: All in all I found this mobile very fascinating. It has all the basic multimedia features and they are of good quality. I liked this mobile a lot and was very happy to purchase a nokia after a long time. I would recommend this mobile to anyone. The price is very good and it will sound pleasing to anyone out there. But recently I found a drawback in it. The battery life is not that good. If you work out some photos or listen to some music the battery life turns out to get low and the battery seems to work not even 2 days completely. But it actually works for 2 days but with the battery drained to the last such that if you use it for some more hours it may turn off. Well I hope this does not become worse. It will surely work for 2 or 2.5 days but may not work for the full third day if using multimedia features.Thanks for reading.
(I’m updating my review and I would like to lay emphasis on one thing, the battery backup of this mobile is not good. When this cell was new for me I didn’t pay much attention to this issue but now I feel it is not acceptable. I need to charge it everyday.So please think before you buy.)