"Many a lot have asked this question seeing this phone. Why do u need to have Xpress Music when we have Walkman?? Those people will just reverse the question when they hear the music from this phone(when used with the right headphones though)..why do you need walkman or ipod when u have nokia 5220 Xpress music??"
Sounds a bit over confident eh? not at all....so let the review start...
I got this phone last week and have used almost 90% of its features within 3 days to write a review about it.
Style and Design: This phone is aimed for the young people between age of 20 and 30. This is because the phone has an asymmetrical design and is very slim. It is not a business phone either. Weighs just 78 grams and fits in your pocket easily. The trapezoidal design looks cool for me but it depends on your personal taste. I will give it 8/10. The keypad is good, the keys are a bit stiff but respond nicely. They may not be suitable for people with large fingers. The 5-way directional pad(DPAD) is also quite nice in terms of feel and ergonomics.
There is a rubber-like padding on the bottom side so the phone wont slide from your hands. The front side material is a durable fiber-plastic combo. The keypad is also well-lit . The display is made of TFT LCD 2 inch and res is 240*320 pixels which gives quite sharp display. The screen is difficult to view when viewd under direct sunlight. But you must be careful not to drop this phone since I am doubtful whether you will get it back in one piece, although the screen has seemingly adequate protection.
Features: Nokia has one of the most simplest UI among mobile phones and this phone is no short of it. The software used is S40 and it has all the features which are required for a mid-level phone. I am not reviewing each and every features here since they are common in all such mobile phones but I will bring out some extraordinary things which I found in this. The phone is actually really fast except when you access memory card(which is a tad slow).It comes preinstalled with maps. So you need to install only Nokia PC map loader to load maps. This is not a navigator phone though, you will have to purchase a separate GPS device for that. The camera is quite decent(2MP) but after all this is a music phone and I always suggest you not to use ur phone as a regular camera unless absolutely necessary. The phones comes with opera mini browser, scientific calculator, widset-support, email client, wallpaper creator and lots of miscellaneous applications which maybe useful occasionally.There is no 3G support, so browsing will be a pain. The phone has 30MB internal memory which is more than sufficient for an average user. You can insert memory card by hotswap feature.The ’contacts’ has lots of useful features.The phone supports cut-copy-paste feature(unlike iphone :P) and I am sure you will get a windows-like feeling once u get used to browse folders in memory card/phone.Connectivity includes USB(3 modes), Bluetooth(more than a dozen profiles) but no IRA. There is option for ’flight mode’ and quadband support useful for frequent air-travellers.Overall feature rating is also 8.5/10.
Music: OK...the best part...The sound quality of this phone is much better than walkman1.0 or ipod but you have to use good quality headphones unlike which the ones came with package. The phones has standard 3.5mm jack and thats a blessing. The loud speakes also deliver excellent audio quality but even after having 2 loud speakers, there is only little stereo effect.There is also equalizer and I suggest you to put it on ’rock’ mode to get the best sound quality. The video player plays mp4 video apart from 3gp but the play is choppy. The radio reception is also quite good(but it will suck if you are travelling in a train..which happened to me yesterday..dunno the reaason)..I will give music capabilites of this phone a 9/10.
Call Features: The in-call sound reception is quite clear. But the vibra alarm is not so strong. And there is 80-20% chance that you will hear the phone ringing loud if you are in a crowded place.There is speed dialing option, call recording and what not. The battery backup is also quite nice. Even with heavy usage the battery will last for about 2 complete days.
Verdict: If you are aged between 20 and 30 and want an excellent quality music phone with good battery backup, this is your best choice. But you must ready to sacrifice heavy browsing(no 3G and slow browser).
And one more thing I found was that there is little possiblity of multitasking when the camera is on.Also the the front part is a finger print magnet. So its totally upto you to decide after reading this review. Anyway I liked this phone very much and it will be my companion for the next 2-3 yrs before I switch to a 3G phone.Value for money is 10/10 with its given price and features.
Package contents:
5220 phone, battery BL5CT, 1GB microSD card(when purchased at cochin), earphone, usb datacable, srtap, charger, cd-rom, user guide with warranty docs.
Price:
INR 7700 at Nokia priority dealer at Cochin.