Nokia Nuron 5230 Review

Introduction:

Nokia’s presence in the US market has dwindled tremendously since the explosion of the modern cell phone era came about during the early portion of this decade. Since then, the only segment where we continue to see Nokia’s focus in the US is profoundly noticed in the entry level area where it’s littered with flip and candybar phones – generally doubled for prepaid and postpaid offerings. Every now and then, we truly are greeted to some devices that are a bit outside of the box from Nokia’s known offerings in the US; say like the Nokia Twist and Mural. That’s where the Nokia Nuron 5230 strategically comes into play for T-Mobile as it finally brings forth a carrier branded Nokia touchscreen device. Despite its arrival, the Nokia Nuron has the monumental task of bringing the limelight back to them in the US as it finds itself in the thick of competition.

The package contains:
•    Nokia Nuron 5230
•    Quickstart Guide
•    4GB microSD card pre-installed
•    Charger
•    Hands-free Headset
•    USB Cable
•    Stylus pick lanyard

Design:

As we’ve already seen with the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and 5530 XpressMusic, the Nokia Nuron 5230 follows in tradition to those handsets in design. Clad in a white and silver color scheme, the Nuron’s plastic feeling exterior doesn’t exude a high-quality design that would impress anyone holding it for the first time. Granted though it’s extremely light weight when compared to other similar phones, the Nuron is your typical pocketable touchscreen phone that can slip into a pocket unnoticed. Despite it’s plasticy feel, the construction feels solid like it should due to the fact there are no moving parts to make us worry about how it’ll hold up in the long run.



You can compare the Nokia Nuron 5230 with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

We were particularly impressed at how the resistive 3.2” LCD touchscreen performed during our testing – it has a resolution of 360x640 with support for 16 million colors. Not only was it comfortable to use as it was responsive to the touch, but the image quality produced by the display was exquisite with its lush and vibrant color tones. Boasting a high resolution, distinguishing text was no problem as it was detailed enough to make out fine lines. Naturally there would be issues viewing the display in direct sunlight, but we found it to be quite manageable in every other lighting condition when the brightness level was set to its maximum setting.



The Nokia Nuron 5230 doesn't stray too far away from what we've seen with some of Nokia's other touchscreen smartphones – button layout and placement are quite similar; large enough to press on correctly. Below the display are the adequately sized and tactile buttons – the send, end, and menu keys. The left side houses the SIM card and microSD slots which are hidden below these plastic flaps while the volume rocker, camera button, and lock/unlock slider are found on the right side. All of the connectivity ports are located on the top of the phone – microUSB port, 3.5mm headset jack, charging port, and the dedicated power button. Finally, the lonely 2-megapixel camera and speaker are found on the completely white rear cover which can be removed to gain access to the battery.



The Nokia Nuron 5230 is very similar to the 5800 XpressMusic, which is by no means a bad thing. It looks nice and is also comfortable to carry around. It's build quality however keeps reminding you that Nokia hasn't used materials of highest quality in making it.

Interface & Functionality:

Following in the footsteps of the Nokia 5800 & 5530 XpressMusic S60 5th Edition smartphones, the Nokia Nuron 5230 doesn't stray far from what we've seen with those other two devices. The major item we noticed missing from the phone was the Contacts Bar theme that was so prevalent on the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic. Aside from that, everything else looks to remain the same except for an analog clock that's now found on the homescreen as opposed to the digital one previously. The indicators for battery life and signal strength, the clock and date are located on the upper part of the display. Tapping the clock will take you to another screen with a larger clock and options for a new alarm, a list with the current alarms and a world clock. We go back to the home screen and this time tap on the date. This triggers a drop-down menu, which gives you access to the calendar and a number of phone profiles. Overall, the experience was typical of S60 5th Edition handsets – it may prove to be a bit daunting at first for T-Mobile customers, but with some practice, the responsive interface won't hinder anyone from really taking a grasp of the platform.



The messaging app comes with the standard OS interface. Aside from the standard, virtual numeric keypad, there is a full QWERTY keyboard of course. Despite the not that large size of the 3.2” screen, typing away is not a problem and we felt at home in just a few minutes. What we found a bit perplexing was the way that additional special characters get revealed. Once you are in the special characters layout (by pressing the "1*" key), you have to press the "shift" key in order to get to the rest of them. You also have handwriting recognition, but would need a few drills to finally get used to it. Not that it allows for fast entry anyway.




The internet browser is not any different from the one that comes on the 5800 XpressMusic and the N97. The app visualizes pages properly, navigation is relatively fast, and scrolling feels somewhat lacking as it does not abruptly go in the direction you want it to. It supports Page Overview that allows you to find what you need, navigate around and zoom in and out on large pages fast. The browser is as good as ever and we didn’t have any problems watching videos on the computer version of YouTube thanks to support for Flash Lite 3.0, but this doesn’t mean you get full Flash support. It´s just not here yet. However, we were surprised that it did not have the ability to open up a link in a new window, but we did enjoy all the other aspects of the web browser.



Camera & Multimedia:

Regrettably, the Nokia Nuron 5230 doesn't get treated to the 3.2-megapixel camera featured on the Nokia 5800 & 5530 XpressMusic. Instead, it offers a now considered below average 2-megapixel camera which didn't leave any doubt about its potential. There is not much to tell about its interface, because it´s the same as the versions on the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and N97. As a whole it´s passable, although switching between options is somewhat unhandy and the thing is they are many. You can share pictures over Ovi, Vox, and Flickr, but adding other services like Facebook, Picasa, etc. is not supported. Not only were photos lacking any solid detail, but it had this hazy look applied to every shot we made – even worse, colors were devoid of any rich tones to ultimately make them look bland.





We were expecting a less than impressive result with video capture with the Nuron, but our mood quickly changed as we watched our playback. With a maximum shooting resolution of 640x360 at 30 fps, videos looked pretty crisp and smooth – colors were still on the bland side though. Even with that shortcoming, we were still pleasantly surprised with its performance.

The music player doesn’t deliver anything new to surprise you with either. Tracks can be filtered by artist, album, playlists, genre, composer, Podcasts or you can just see a list of all available content. It´s a good thing you can choose between equalizer presets and audio effects and as a whole, the app is easy to handle. Despite those equalizer options, audio quality from the speaker was mute for the most part and particularly sounded strained at higher volume levels.

Hitting the same road block we witnessed with the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, the media player kept on crashing and locking up the phone whenever attempting to play a 640x272 video encoded in H.264. We found the resolution to be the reason here, as we did manage to play H.264, but in a res that was too low to be enjoyable to watch. Videos encoded in 480x320 MPEG-4 played smooth to say the least.



With 70MB of on-board storage memory available, there is a 4GB microSD card pre-installed that'll allow media buffs to be fully equipped right from the start. If that still limits you, the Nuron can accept microSD cards up to 16GB in capacity.

Connectivity:

Using the Nokia Nuron 5230 internationally for voice calls won't be an issue for the quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) phone, but it'll only work on 3G speeds over T-Mobile's network since it has dual-band UMTS (1700/2100 MHz) connectivity. Although it seems that Wi-Fi is starting to be a common thing among US smartphones, the Nuron lacks it and will rely solely on T-Mobile's network for all data access. Finally, there's Bluetooth 2.0 on board that'll allow the phone to connect to a variety of devices and transfer files.

Performance:

Calling quality was impressive with an almost clear quality on both ends – even going further, there was no noticeable background noise to ruin the conversation. One gripe we did have with the Nuron's calling quality was that the speaker generally lacked any power – which made listening on the highest volume setting troublesome at times. Switching to the speakerphone resulted in an almost a static tone to our voices while crackling was prominent in the loudest volume setting – still it proved to be decent enough to use.

Connection to T-Mobile's network was spot on without any loss in signal strength or dropped calls during our testing in the greater Philadelphia region.

When placing the general brightness of the phone to the middle setting, we were able to get 2 full days of use out of the phone – easily exceeding the usual 1 day battery life out of other smartphones. The manufacturer has the phone rated for 7 hours of talk and 432 hours of standby time.

Conclusion:

Struggling to get a foothold in the US smartphone market, Nokia has finally brought a carrier branded S60 5th Edition phone with the Nuron. It's definitely the right direction that the veteran phone maker needs to tackle, but the Nuron only skims the surface of the waters with its simplicity and ease of use. In the wake of Android's fast rise to prominence in the smartphone market, Nokia's biggest hurdle to overcome is undoubtedly its smartphone platform. Although it's not quite as dominant in certain aspects, the Nokia Nuron 5230 is a suitable handset for anyone that's looking for something that's stable, swift, and well rounded – all of the necessities required in being a decent offering.