Nokia 5320 XpressMusic Review

Interface:

Since Nokia 5320 is based on the Symbian OS with S60 interface (3rd Еdition, Feature Pack 2), it is equipped with all software extras present in the latest smartphones (e.g. N78 and 6220).

On the home screen, you can place three variants of a standby application with all of them giving you fast access to the basic functions of the phone. We liked Nokia default the most (including shortcuts to the player, search, the web browser and gallery), since it is very simple and offers applications which are really important for this model.

As in the previous models you have the option to change the look of the main menu. You can either have a grid, list, horseshoe or V-shaped. You may think we are conservative but we prefer the standard positioning. Besides, in the last two options there is an annoying lag when jumping from one icon to another.


Phonebook:

Contacts

As in all Symbian S60 based phones, here also, you can save as many contacts as you want with the only limitation being the availability of free memory to store them. Besides the standard two names, mobile and a land line, you can add various details to each name. The list includes things like pictures (large size), ringtone, nickname, title, date of birth and even an assistant’s number. Searching is done by both names but unfortunately, it cannot be activated by entering numbers at the homescreen. This is a function that is becoming more and more popular even in the non-smartphones.


Organizer:

From the menu Office you can set an unlimited number of alarms, which is a wonderful feature that will decrease drastically the chance of you oversleeping for work or school.

The calendar can be viewed by month, week day or To-do notes. The user is able to save appointments, notes, anniversaries and the To-dos we already mentioned.


The other applications in this menu give you access to active (pictures, sounds and videos can be added) and regular notes, calculator, dictionary (if there are no other languages installed, it acts as a thesaurus and it has an option to pronounce the words) and unit converter.


For viewing of Office 2003 documents, the phone is equipped Quickoffice. Small files are visualized correctly but a more complex Excel table can be a real challenge. If you need to edit files and the support of Office 2007 is important to you, you’ll need to buy an additional license. You are able to view PDF documents (via Adobe PDF), but due to the small size of the screen, you’ll have to scroll a lot. Also, the fact that moving to the next page is done through the options menu is rather inconvenient.

There’s more than enough space available for applications – 160 MB built-in and a 1 GB microSD card.