Nokia 5700 XpressMusic Review

Camera:

Like every modern phone, 5700 has a built-in digital camera with resolution of 2 mega-pixels and a small photoflash LED. It is started 3 seconds after twisting the lower part of the phone when the whole screen turns into a horizontal interface. We were surprised that although the phone operates on Symbian 9.2, this interface is not like those of N95 and N76, but is much simplified. In this way Nokia want to show that the phone is not of the multimedia series, without intentionally reducing the quality of the camera images.

There are several modes in the Options menu: Video, Panorama, Night, Sequence, Self-Timer(10/20/30sec). You can use the settings to adjust the White Balance, Color filter and the photoflash (on/off/auto) and the resolution and compression of the photos taken.

Two seconds after pressing the shutter button, the photo shows on the display and after pressing the button again you can make a new photo after another 1.5 – 2 seconds. 4 seconds between two photos is good time, allowing you to take lots of pictures.

The quality of the photos depends strongly on the light, at which they are taken. Best results are achieved at daylight, while using the night-mode will not lead to impressive photo quality: the image is rather “dotted” with plenty of interference or the so-called “noise”. When photo-shooting indoors, the flash will be of certain use, but in reality it is not capable of illuminating more distant objects. If you attempt taking pictures at close range, the result will be disappointing for its lack of focus and the image – unusable.



The Panorama regime offers an easy to use software showing by a gray/red arrow whether you have to move closer of away to/from the previous photo when taking the second one, to put together the panorama. Unfortunately, it is limited to two photos only and we would like to be able to take at least 3 or even 4-5 in the best case. Yet there is no point in using the panorama since the end result is a photo of a size much smaller than 2 megapixels.

You can also shoot a video with maximum resolution of QVGA 320х240 and up to 15 frames per second, which is less than the necessary 24, but is still usable. Compression decreases quality but the videos can still be viewed on a computer.

Nokia 5700 XpressMusic sample video at 320x240 pixels resolution

Multimedia:

You can view photos from the memory in the gallery where the files are visualized as a vertical list with small thumbnails. The 3D gallery of the N-series phones is missing here, too, like in 6120. The video-clips are viewed in a RealPlayer which has a fullscreen option. In our test we used QVGA videos in MPEG4 H.263 and were surprised to see that they were chopped up as if streamed from slow-connection Internet. The same videos can be viewed without problems on E65 whose processor is much slower (220 instead of 369 MHz). Our attempt at opening a H.264 video resulted in what we had expected – only the sound was heard.

The music player is the one known from the N95 and other Symbian 9.2 N-series smartphones and is the probably the most advanced one used in Nokia. It allows for filtering the music by artist/album/genre, as on a dedicated music player.

The Now Playing interface will visualize the Album art cover if one is attached to the file, the track information and the functions of the D-pad, as it will act as a shortcut. This interface is good but we still thing that can be optimized to show larger image.

You have 4 equalizers (classical, jazz, pop and rock) and you can also add additional custom ones. The audio settings options include stereo widening, balance and loudness.

The sound quality is very good, and thanks to the build-in loudspeakers the volume is quite loud, but not as loud as the one of Nokia N95 which also has a build in stereo loudspeakers.When the phone is in music mode the two speakers will be on the left side which will help for higher volume, but we prefer to listen to music in the phone mode, in which you have left and right speaker and more-noticeable stereo effect. You have to connect stereo earpieces if you want to listen to music with higher quality. You will need them to turn on the radio, too, because they will act as aerial. You can save up to 50 stations with names. The 5700 XpressMusic is Bluetooth Stereo enabled (A2DP) and that’s why you can also listen to music with one of Nokia’s Bluetooth stereo headset models BH-501 or BH-601 for example.


Software:

Nokia 5700 has about 31 MB of free memory which can be increased with a maximum of 2 GB by a microSD card. The phone has 64 MB RAM but after the system is loaded, about 20 MB remain for the user.

You have two pre-installed applications (2 games): Marble, where you have to fit balls of the same color so that they destroy one another, City Bloxx, where you have to build structures with a different size by putting blocks one on top of the other. We liked all two games and find them very suitable to make good use of one’s free time.

We have been surprised by the fact that in this unit (in contrast to 6120) there is no PDF reader or Quick Office; the only pre-installed applications being the two games. Obviously, Nokia have reckoned that those, who will take interest in the model, will mostly make use of its amusement capacity. However, this will hardly be a problem, since all kinds of applications are downloadable from the Internet and installable afterwards.