Nokia 5500 (2)

Nokia 5500 Sport review: Smartphone for active lifestyle

If Nokia 5500 Sport doesn’t manage to win you with its combination of a modern Symbian and a resistant body, you will surely give in to its touchpad control, its numerous functions that help you enhance your physical condition, or to its incoming SMS reader.

Official pictures of Nokia 5500 Sport

Key Features:

• Outstanding construction for improved resistance
• Symbian OS
• Special functions for sportsmen
• Automatic reading of incoming messages
• Built-in radio
• Touchpad control of music and sport applications, and messages
• Application for work with Bluetooth GPS Module

Main Disadvantages:

• Stiff keys
• Connector cap is loose
• Battery cover is difficult to remove
• Voice record duration limited to one minute
• Basic alarm clock

When Nokia presented its resistant sports smartphone 5500 in May, I could not believe my eyes. A Symbian built in an “off-road” mobile? Why? Today I seem to have found the answer: thanks to the possibilities hidden behind the Symbian OS Nokia managed to preinstall in this phone plenty of applications to meet the requirements of sports fans that are at the same time the main customer group Nokia 5500 Sport has been targeted at.

Nokia 5500 Sport live

Nokia 5500’s design resembles the design of Nokia 3220. The phone has a resistant body covered with rubber elements (in the style of Nokia 5140i), an operational system of a modern smartphone, a number of unique functions, and a bit of sport spirit – all this wrapped up in a single handset – Nokia 5500 Sport. The phone looks rather common at first sight, but its software equipment beats a great part of the competition.

If you don’t like the black design you can to pick the model in more provocative colors

The smallest S60

A lot of people express a high degree of dissatisfaction with the narrower middle part of Nokia 5500. I myself like it quite a lot though. What’s more, it is exactly the curves of the phone body that facilitate the press of all side buttons on the rubber surface. With its 107 x 45 x 18 mm Nokia 5500 is one of the smallest and lightest smartphones ever together with Nokia E50 and Sony Ericsson W950.

The telephone held in hand • size comparison with a credit card

In the following table pay attention to the fact that Nokia 5500 Sport smartphone is smaller and lighter than the current best heavy duty mobile phone Siemens M75.

Model	Size	Weight
Nokia 5500	107 x 45 x 18 mm	103 g
Siemens M65	109 x 49 x 19 mm	104 g
Nokia 5140i	107 x 47 x 24 mm	101 g
Siemens M75	111 x 56 x 21 mm	110 g

Comparison with other resistant phonesNokia 5500’s surface is a true mosaic of materials of various kinds. Its keypad as well as the area around the display is almost entirely rubber, which creates an interesting contrast as the edges are made of glossy steel. Beneath the silver frame there is another, grayish rubber layer, which is clearly visible from aside. The bottom part is made of black plastics, which fully cover the rear side of the phone. The battery cover represents a combination of all the above mentioned materials – silver steel, black plastics, and rubber layer (the latter is used on connector caps).

Plenty of different materials

All parts of the phone stick together perfectly; not a single wrong move. Well, nearly not a single: the cap of the connectors has not been elaborated well and as a result it gets loose quite frequently. On the other hand Nokia designers deserve an excellent mark for their work on the protection cover of the battery, which is often one of the weakest constructional spots of most mobile devices. Do not follow my example of trying to manage the tiny screw holding the battery cover with nails as you will break them. You will do fine with a screwdriver or a coin.

Rear cover lock

The capacity of Nokia 5500 Sport’s lithium-ion battery is 860 mAh, which is said (according to official announcements) to provide up to 4 hours of talk time and 270 hours of stand-by time. Naturally, real-life numbers are somewhat smaller. If you use the phone extensively, that is, you make frequent calls, write plenty of SMS, use the radio, the MP3 player or use Bluetooth, you will have to charge Nokia 5500 every second day. Beneath the battery there is a slot for a SIM card and a microSD memory card. The location of this slot itself comes to show that memory cards will not be possible to change while the phone is running. On the other hand, however, this decision is quite logic given the fact that Nokia 5500 Sport is designed to resist heavy duty outdoor usage.

Once the cover has been removed • slot for SIM card and microSD memory card

Bigger thighs, slimmer waist

The narrower central area of Nokia 5500 Sport seems to be the most discussed design element among readers. Leave this aside and Nokia 5500 looks like any common mobile device. Its neutral look will neither fascinate you, nor disappoint you.

Among various color versions presented in the official images of the phone I liked the black & white one the most, that is the one I tested before I sat down to write this review. The gray-yellow model does not look obtrusive either, while the black & yellow one is quite freaky and I believe it will catch the attention of customers who tend to follow current fashion trends.

Side contours

Keys on Nokia 5500 Sport are not on the keypad only. Various control elements are located all over the lateral parts of the phone. On the left side you will find the volume-control and the Push-to-talk buttons. A dominant on the top of the device is the LED together with the loud speaker grill (the latter serving both music and calls). Right next to the LED you will see a standard icon, which shows you where to press when you need to switch on the phone or change the currently active profile.

LED and main switch-off button • volume control • LED in action (sets off by a longer press on the asterisk)

In the upper area of the right side of the device there is a mode button. Use it to switch between stand-by mode, sports mode, and the music player. In the bottom of the phone are the Infrared port and the Edit key with a pencil icon (located somewhat untraditionally). The cap in the bottom protects both the Pop-port connector and the charger slot. Make sure you remove the cap before you plug in the connector. The cap is pretty solid and holds well even if rubber.

Mo

Rubber is all over around

Due to the strong construction and the empowered resistance, work with the keypad is not the most pleasant thing in this phone. Keys located in the margins are pretty difficult to use, even more difficult than the numeric keys in the center of the rubber surface of the phone. For example, the reluctance of both the right and the left functional keys as well as the * and the # keys is so significant that – should you replace your old handset with Nokia 5500 Sport – you will need time to get used to it. After all it is a matter of time. In few days you will be able to type SMS as easy as before.

Keypad

Keypad’s functional area creates an interesting contrast as to the monotonous numeric part. The four-way navigation key is very comfortable to use thanks to the variety of materials used on it. The same holds true for its confirming central part. The white rubber uplifts, which have replaced the standard red and green receivers, do not require any significant effort, either. Each line with numeric keys is separated from the nearby ones by an expressed rift, which highly facilitates touch orientation. The functional part of the keypad is managed through the use of the four-way key and the side uplifted areas.

Main control element • functional keys

Keypad details

The remarks mentioned above considering orientation on the keypad could partly be compensated by the excellent backlighting of the latter. The keypad gets illuminated in a perfectly even mild white nuance. The only unusual elements are the LEDs located beneath the white panel of the navigation key: the top right LED gleams in white when the phone is on stand-by, the bottom right LED gets activated when the music player is initiated and illuminates in green. The last to mention is the left bottom LED, which has red color and turns on when the phone is in sport mode.

Keypad backlighting

The illumination of the main control element depends on the phone mode (normal, music player, or sport applications)

Symbian in a square

Nokia 5500 is the first Nokia smartphone with a square display. In terms of resolution qualities (208 x 208 pixels) it scores somewhere between older displays of 176 x 208 pixels and the new resolution types of 240 x 320 pixels. And what about the quality? Nokia 5500’s display is a joy for the eye. It features an active TFT technology, supports 262K colors and has gorgeously even backlights. A similar image comfort could only be found in luxurious models like Nokia 8800, for example.

As a consequence of the square display, icons and letters look a little bit unusual when compared to other Symbian models. Even so, their design is brilliant. Some menu fonts are extremely small though.

Display surface • display in the dark

Screenshots could hardly be considered explicit. If you want to see for yourself the exact size of Nokia 5500’s display and visual elements in reality, have a look at phone photos or simply modify the size of the display screenshots so that they fit into a square of 31 x 31 mm in your preferred resolution (for example on a printed list of paper).

3rd edition – modern and handy

Nokia 5500 Sport runs on the S60 user interface of the Symbian OS, and more particularly, Symbian OS v9.1 and S60 3rd Edition. This new OS brings plenty of innovations; it is safer and more robust. On the other hand it complicates work with the phone to a certain extent hence it is pretty probable that even the cheapest programs may have to be obtained at a higher price in a result of certificate requirements.

Nevertheless, the 3rd edition of the S60 platform contains useful applications for end users. Here are some of the main innovations:

• A possibility to update firmware through mobile networks
• Push-to-Talk included in basic equipment
• USB Mass Storage
• Application improvements: a new web browser and an innovated calendar

Bear in mind however that all above mentioned improvements imply one considerable disadvantage: neither Nokia 5500 Sport, nor other smartphones featuring S60 3rd Edition permit the installation of programs originally designed for older mobiles. There are no exceptions. As a consequence, software designers will have no remedy but adjust all existing programs to the new operation version – a task, which not always means simple recompilation. On the other side, Symbian is not a new OS anymore and it has been some time already since designer fixed their attention on it, that is, every day more and more suitable applications appear on the market.

e button • connector rubber cap

The good old Symbian

The uncommon resolution of the main display of Nokia 5500 in no way limits the visualization abilities of the phone. The most apparent difference is to be found in the fonts used in the phone menu. The stand-by display is divided into two basic sections: an upper part including information about the corresponding operator, data transfers, signal strenght, charge levels of the battery, the time, and even about the active ringing profile. The bottom part is either empty or contains details about the active stand-by display.

Within the stand-by display the phone can show up to 6 icons, which you can select from the settings section. Beneath these icons you can see updated calendar lists, unaccomplished tasks, and the music file running at that particular moment. To open an item (including the music player) and view the lists it hides simply select it and open it. Volume levels can be controlled straight from the main display as well. At the same time the right and the left functional keys can be assigned any function according to the user’s preference.

Main display without • and with active stand-by display • assigning functions to icons and keys

If you prefer not to use the active stand-by display, feel free to assign a function to each of the ways of the navigation key. Even so you will have a key less than the usual as Nokia 5500 Sport lacks the so called Multimedia key (available in all other smartphones equipped with Symbian OS).

Sportive & fast

Time shown on the stand-by display can be set up so that it gets automatically updated by the respective operator. This way you won’t need to bother yourself with time changes when you travel as operators of mobile networks will take care of them. In any case, make sure that the operator supports this service.

The main menu can be visualized either as a matrix, or as a list of items. One display page fits in 3 x 3 icons at a time. Instant selection is available through identically distributed number keys. In addition, the menu can be reordered and the items can be used in a different manner. The menu is cyclical, that is, it does not stop at the bottom but rolls again ti start from the beginning. Icons are designed with taste; contrast is very good. Applications may also be initiated via voice orders. Voice control works seamlessly, recognizing all built-in functions without prior instructions.

Various menu levels

The general design of the main menu of Nokia 5500 Sport can be modified through the use of graphic themes. Much like the applications however, graphic themes are exclusively made for Symbian S60 3rd Edition, which makes older themes virtually useless. Nokia 5500 contains 4 themes – two in the phone and two on the card – preinstalled by the manufacturer, all of them of average quality.

User interface is adjustable through graphic themes (original Nokia themes can be seen in the above pictures)

New applications are stored in the My own folder. From here you can then move them to other locations in the phone, into the root folder for example. The red key closes running programs. This is why in case of a necessity to minimize a running application evade the red key and make sure you get back to the main display in an alternative way – for example by pressing twice the key that opens the menu.

The speed, with which Nokia 5500 Sport responds to user’s orders, surprised me greatly. I find Nokia 5500 even faster than older N70 and 6681 models, but my opinion is totally subjective. Work with menu, phonebook or messages is pretty agile, while simpler operations are managed nearly as fast as in non-smartphone mobiles based on the Nokia S40 platform.

As all phones Nokia 5500 also has its mysteries; one of them is the memory size. According to the information published on the official Nokia website, the 5500 Sport model carries 64 MB; however, the File manager in the phone – when asked to display a detailed statement about available memory – announces mere 10 MB (the same number is published on the Forum Nokia website. I suppose the rest of the memory – 54 Mb – gets used up by the OS. The difficulty I meet here is that there are very few applications for measuring the memory of a phone in general. According to one of them, FileExplorer, the system disk Z of Nokia 5500 Sport has 37 MB. Yet 37 + 10 gives 47, not 64. So where have the resting 17 MB gone?

So what’s up with the memory?

Nokia 5500 Sport is delivered together with a 64MB microSD memory card. In other words, the phone does not demonstrate any special memory storage. If you want to enjoy music fully, an investment into an additional memory card would be necessary.

Not so good at images

The camera lens is located on the back side of the phone. Accompanying accessories (like flash or mirror for self-portraits) are missing. The lens is protected by a transparent plastic layer. The camera itself has a 2 megapixel sensor. The maximum available resolution is 1600 x 1200 pixels. Beside it the phone offers other two, lower resolution options – 1152 x 864 and 640 x 480 pixels. Once you have selected your preferred resolution you can further choose among three different quality levels as well as select the default names for the saved image. An option to select where in the memory you prefer to save your image is also available.

Built-in camera

Main window • settings • functions • white balance

The camera application reminds the cameras used in older smartphones and is rather limited if compared to the one built-in Nokia N80 for example. I mean, do not even try to look for functions like exposure compensation, auto-focusing, scene type setup, etc. Nokia 5500 provides you with 4 preset white balance settings while other options include night mode, sequence, self-release function, and color effects.

Nokia 5500 is equipped with a four-time digital zoom consisting of 12 steps. All my tries to capture text or closely located objects came out to be an absolute fiasco. The only visible part of a newspaper image, for example, is the article title; article content remains totally out of focus. Any additional image modifications require the download of special applications.

Take a closer look at the samples taken with Nokia 5500

Work with video records is very similar to photographing. The phone saves videos in 3GP format. The maximum available resolution here is 176 x 144 pixels (QCIF). There is also an alternative resolution option to use in MMS – 128 x 96 pixels. A night mode to be used under unfavorable light conditions is available too. Further on you can change the white balance and setup color nuance, or even deactivate sound in order to spare space in MMS. Zooming during shooting is no problem. And this is the end of the video settings Nokia 5500 Sport has to offer.

Nokia 5500 sample video:

Music is a must

Could you imagine yourself running without a pair of earphone plugged into your ears? Well, it is obvious that no sport mobile phone can afford to lack a music player. In Nokia 5500 Sport you can search music files by artist, by album name, by genre, or by composer. Once you have found your file, simply select it and it will start playing. Volume levels are sufficient. Sound quality, provided you plug in good earphones, is excellent. You may even not come to use equalizer. The music player reads files with digital protection; details on playing keys can be found in a separate application in the menu.

Main window • menu with available functions • list of music files • sound settings

The music player can play in background. When a call is coming, playing gets gradually hushed. Once the call has been terminated, the respective music file continues from the moment of interruption. Ringtones can be heard in the earphones. To summarize, Nokia 5500 Sport’s player is outstanding. It can also be managed through touches on the keypad surface or on the phone sides.

In the last version of its software package PC Suite Nokia improved the application Music Manager, which deals with music files and creates the base necessary for their comfortable storing in the phone. While transferring files it is possible to either automatically convert music files into M4A format (optimal for use in a mobile phone according to Nokia), at a data rate of 48 kb/sec, or work in original format. Standard conversion is not recommendable for its poor quality even though it reduces file size 6 times. Otherwise the results will be disappointing. Other available options are Mass Storage and music copying straight from the Windows Media Player 10 application (requires a download of a simple manager.)

Radio

It has been a while since Nokia began to implement the function Visual Radio into its phones (ignoring the fact that there is not a single radio station in the world that broadcasts visual, except for few experiments). Anyway, Visual Radio can be used for listening to common radio stations, which is the most important detail.

Radio stations are tuned automatically, by signal intensity, through manual band search, or by direct typing of the frequency. Unfortunately, RDS is not available. The phone offers 20 positions for saving favorite stations. Besides, you can get connected to a special Internet service, which offers a list of all radio stations broadcasting in the area you find yourself in. Saving some of these into the phone is not a problem.

Main window • stations • saved items

Radio is stereophonic. Yet, it switches to mono mode every time signal gets worse, that is, when the cable of the earphones fails to serve as an antenna. The control device features a pin to hook on one’s clothes, while the earphones are equipped with clips that hold them behind one’s ears. If you find original earphones inconvenient, feel free to use any other pair of earphones – just connect them to the remote control through the 3.5 mm jack. Original earphones lack bass elements a bit, but I consider them generally very good.

Enclosed earphones with an adapter and a classic jack

Calls, sound and profiles

With Nokia 5500 Sport you will feel like home everywhere where there is GSM network in 900/1800/1900 MHz. Incoming calls are alerted about by a ringtone, vibration, a combination of both, or simply through the blinking of the keypad and the display backlighting according to the presets of the respective ringing profile. The phone offers a total of 5 basic ringing profiles plus a special one called Offline. Other profiles can be easily created if necessary.

For those who do not want to look at their mobile every time somebody calls them Nokia 5500 Sport can automatically read caller’s name simultaneously with ringing.

Melody alerting incoming calls can be hushed. If you reject a call, the phone could automatically send to the caller a SMS with predefined text.

All formats from 64-voice MIDs, through MP3, AMR, AAC, eAAC+, up to real melodies can be used as ringing melodies. Call, message and email alerts are set up separately.

Volume capacity of both the phone as a whole and its loud speakers is pretty good. However, I find the sound produced by the built-in speaker rather flat as basses and heights are not expressed enough. Nokia 5500 has a voice recorder. The maximum duration of call records is limited to one minute.

“Unlimited” memory

Nokia 5500’s phonebook can contain as many contacts as available memory permits. Each entry can contain numerous fields, including details like professional position, mobile numbers, numbers for video calls, internet phone numbers, Push-to-talk, fax numbers, pagers, electronic addresses, birth date, web addresses etc. Contacts can be organized into groups. Each group as well as each contact can be assigned a particular ringing melody (contacts can contain an image too).

Besides, you can also dial straight from the phonebook through Push-to-talk as well as create messages and duplicate items, which you can consequently save onto the SIM card. Or vice versa: copy data both from and to the phonebook, the SIM card, and the memory card, and send them further on or synchronize them individually. To search the phonebook you need to gradually type the initials of the respective contact. Searching process is pretty fast.

Searching the list • detail • selecting item type • caller groups

And what if one finds the keypad uncomfortable? Then use voice dialing. Each contact can be assigned an automatically created record. You only have to create a new contact, pronounce it, and a call can be made immediately.

Send audio messages

Nokia 5500’s message menu contains one unusual item in addition. Beside SMS, MMS and emails straight from the menu you can also create a so called audio message, which is virtually a faster MMS containing a sound track only.

Alike items in the phonebook messages are saved into the shared memory of the phone. Due to the smaller size of the display the SMS editor provides 6 lines en bloc, that is, less than usual. The same number of lines is displayed when a message is to be read, so rolling up and down is inevitable. This inconvenience is caused by the bigger size of the applied font and the unnecessary spaces left between the lines.

Message editor • reading a message • settings • options to choose from when a message is being closed

Nokia 5500 Sport does not require a special approval when more than one message is to be sent, so make sure you check the counter regularly. Predictive text insertion is available through T9, which can be deactivated if necessary.

Just touch to read

Once again Nokia in its 5500 Sport model offers a special hint for those who enjoy comfort: the synthesizer built in the phone can read received messages for you, if you set it to do so. This option is accessible either directly from the message menu or from a separate folder in the main menu or through a multiple tapping on the front side of the phone once message has been received (only possible if this function is activated). By multiple tapping I mean three consequent light taps on the keypad (it is not necessary to press any key). Imagine that you are running in the park and a message is coming in. You will not have to stop to read it. Nokia 5500 Sport will do it for you.

Reading a SMS • voice setup • choosing a language synthesizer • details about reader

Data profile for MMS is set immediately after the SIM card has been inserted for the first time. In other words, you do not need to interfere into the original settings of the phone in order to send images, texts, audio or visual messages of maximum 300 KB. Nevertheless, first check the number of messages your operator generally permits. Nokia 5500 Sport also has a simple MMS editor, which offers preset samples to supplement user’s creativity.

MMS editor • inserting an object • choosing image type • preparing a presentation

Somewhat bigger efforts are required for the setup of the email client. A huge help here is the exact knowledge of the size of the email box. Nokia 5500 Sport works with POP3 and IMAP4 protocols. Outgoing messages are sent through a SMTP server. Users can also download only email headers or the first few KB of the incoming email messages.

According to Nokia official website the email client built in Nokia 5500 Sport works seamlessly with attachments in JPEG, 3GP, MP3, PPT, DOC, Excel, and PDF formats. If you are to deal with Office documents, you will need to additionally download an appropriate application. PDF files are opened thanks to the preinstalled Adobe PDF program.

Mailbox setup • email tester • attachment list

Organizing in bulk

Let me start the review of Nokia 5500’s organizing functions with the alarm clock. The latter doesn’t offer neither repeated, nor multiple alarms. The application Clock shows local time as well as the time in numerous world metropolises (the entire list contains a total of 170 cities).

Do not bother to look for an icon that says Tasks as there is no such one. Alike Windows Mobile the new Symbian version combines tasks and calendar in one application. In a result, tasks to accomplish are shown in a separate list as well as in the day view of the calendar. Basic calendar functions have remained untouched: day, week, and month views; 4 event types (meeting, note, anniversary and task), event repetition, and audio alert.

Month and week view of the calendar • task list

My general impression is that Nokia has not devoted enough time to develop the alarm clock, the notes application, and the voice recorder for this new Sport model. All three functions are traditionally weak spots in Symbian and the Nokia 5500 Sport is no exception to the rule: the font used in the notes is unnecessarily big; voice records have a duration limit of mere one minute. At the same time the software market offers very few alternatives.

Among common organizing functions you will also find a unit converter, a calculator, a file manager, and an Epocware program for file compression.

Organizer menu • notes • calculator • converter

Motion sensor for gaming

As usual, games are the greatest instrument to fight boredom. Nokia 5500 Sport has two games: a three-dimensional snake and the even more interesting Groove Lab. In the latter your goal is to get a bead to a predetermined point passing through a brain-teaser labyrinth. On the way there you collect precious stones, which – once the target place has been reached – serve as keys that open you the doors to the following game levels. Quite entertaining is the fact that the bead is not navigated through the control key, but by inclining the phone from basic horizontal position. No, you’ve understood me well . It does work this way. At the beginning you will be stunned by the sensitiveness, with which Nokia 5500 responds to inclining. Later you may happen to find navigation more difficult as the bead starts to fly all over the labyrinth. It is all a matter of time and habit. I personally find this innovation pretty attractive, even though software implementation still calls for improvement.

Here are the results of the iBenchmark test:

• jBenchmark 1.0: 5 547
• jBenchmark 2.0: 481
• jBenchmark 3D: 183 (HQ), 309 (LQ)

Flash Lite, an application that backs up flash animation and games is available too. Try it by opening the Sudoku in flash format located on the memory card. If you are a fan of this originally oriental game, I guarantee you will be flying with joy.

Snake • Groove Lab • Sudoku

If you happen not to understand the principle of a function and you are lazy to browse the phone menu, stay calm, do not get desperate. Nokia 5500 Sport has an application called Instructions, which explains how the phone works in details.

EDGE, browser…what more could one possible want?

As far as data are concerned, Nokia 5500 Sport is a standard mobile equipped with GPRS Class 10 and EDGE Class 10. What makes it a bit special is its brilliant Internet browser located in the My Own folder in the main menu. Here, under the Service folder you will also find a simple browser similar to those implemented in mobiles with older Symbian versions.

Website without images, text version • visited pages • settings

Access points to the Internet or WAP do not require prior setting. Setting Wizard is another item you can forget about (even though it can be found in the Instruments folder under Setup Manager) as the phone takes care of everything immediately after the SIM card is inserted for the first time.

Nokia 5500 Sport connects to other devices through an Infrared port, via Bluetooth or by using USB data cable. In the Bluetooth menu you will find an interesting option that permits you to control SIM card from a distance. Thanks to the new Symbian version you will also be able to connect the phone to a PC as a new drive (USB Mass Storage). When Nokia 5500 Sport is connected through a cable, it asks you what you intend to use the phone for: for work with PC Suite, for data transfers or for music downloads.

Keep fit with your phone

I guess that the main reason for Nokia to equip its 5500 Sport model with an OS was the possibility to implement as many sport functions as possible. When I first switched on the phone and saw a simple sport tester I remained speechless. Is it possible that distance is measured on the frequency, with which the phone moves? I could not believe my eyes. I put on my sport shoes and flew out to try it out. As I did not have a bike equipped with a tachometer, I marked a starting point, got into my car and drove for exactly 500 meters. I got out of the car, activated the walking mode in the phone, stuck the device into my pocket and got all the way back on foot. (For good measuring Nokia recommends that the phone is placed in its holder, but I doubt you will carry it hooked to your belt while doing sports).

Enclosed holder

Well, when I reached my starting point I pulled out Nokia 5500 out of my pocket and imagine my astonishment: the display stated exactly 485 m. The phone showed far better result that I had expected. I ran during the second part of my test. I activated the running mode, placed the phone into my pocket once again, and ran back to the car. The result? 436 meters. As the difference between both tests came out to be quite big, I do recommend you to carry Nokia 5500 in its case when you run.

List of activities • measuring time (clock icon) and speed (the human figure icon)

The phone can not only be used while running or walking, but also when you ride a horse, roll or climb stairs. If you do not feel like counting stairs, use the sport tester instead. In this case I recommend you to leave the phone in your front pocket than to have it stuck in the holder. Tests showed that measuring is more precise this way.

Touch it!

Use touch control to evade frequent pulling the phone out of the clip on your belt. Not only sport applications are possible to manage by touch, but also the music player and SMS reader. Touch control is very simple: a triple tap on the keypad runs music (attention! The music player must be at least minimized, that is, must be active), a triple tap on the right or on the left side of the phone takes you to the following or the previous file respectively. Running with the phone placed in your pocket and the music player being on is not recommendable, because playing gets frequently interrupted and reactivated as the body of the phone meets with one’s leg. Touch system in case of incoming messages or in the sport mode is quite similar to the one described above.

Setting control functions through mere tapping

Before you start to use the Sport mode you need to set up your own measures in the Sport application, which are then stored under a password so that no one else but you can change them. One’s own measures help achieve better results while one accomplishes their preset training plan. Results are stored into a folder called Diary, where they can be opened and viewed through general or graphic images whenever you need to check them. The last item from the Sport menu that should be mentioned is the so called Tests. Here you will find a detailed description of two physical-condition tests.

Personal settings • activities of the month • …and of the day • activity graph

Nokia Sports Manager (download available here) is a supplementary program for the application Sport. It copies measured values to a PC. Nokia Sports Manager appears as another item in the menu of Nokia PC Suite. Data gets imported automatically once the phone has been connected and the corresponding application activated. On one hand Nokia Sports Manager offers a rather limited number of options; on the other hand, however, this enhances the work of the phone memory without data loses.

Nokia Sports Manager

Nokia 5500 Sport is ideal for users who frequently do outdoor activities in the evening and tend to come back home late as it disposes of a LED activated by a press-hold on the asterisk key located on the top of the mobile. The light produced by the LED is not so intensive to show you the road in the middle of the night, but it is sufficient for use in a closed dark space.

No competition on the horizon

Nowadays most current mobile phones try to compete with common technical products in photographing, music reproduction, quality elaboration of work applications etc. With its new 5500 Sport model Nokia has entered a new field – sport. The phone features interesting new functions, which will both surprise and please many users. Yet, I think that Nokia 5500 Sport will probably remain a disappointment rather than a success for real sportsmen. For example, the phone does not have a Bluetooth sensor for pulse measuring or speed recorder for horse riding. Data are collected through a general motion sensor only suitable for approximate measuring or checks. Professional sportsmen will probably go for Nokia 5500 Sport as for a smart and resistant mobile device, but I doubt they will ever make use of its sport functions. Common sporttesters remain far more precise, offering a greater amount of measuring options.

Due to its OS Nokia 5500 Sport scores higher than any other current heavy duty mobile phone. In this sense it can be compared or confronted with smartphones only. The official price of the phone is ˆ300. The strongest competitor of Nokia 5500 Sport is expected to be the cheaper musical Nokia 3250 or the smartphone Nokia N72 (ˆ30 more expensive). Nokia 5500 Sport is, however, the ideal choice for those who want a resistant phone with the latest OS.

For our reviews we shoot, download and prepare much more pictures then finally appear in the article. They can be interesting for some of you therefore we offer all of them in one place: photo gallery.

Nokia 5500 Sport

Pictures of Nokia 5500 phone – black version

Pictures of the display

Photos taken with the phone

Nokia Sports Manager

Source :http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_5500_sport-review-112p8.php

Nokia 5500

Smaller than a smartphone! Smarter than a dumb phone! Is it a bird? is it a plane? No, it’s… the Nokia 5500

What’s this? Surely it can’t be a smartphone, it’s too small and light!

But the Nokia 5500 is a smartphone, although you wouldn’t know it from the marketing which makes out that it’s just a normal cameraphone with a tough casing. There’s the telltale S60 squiggly menu key though, so what should someone make of this gadget?

Well, the truth is that it’s a smartphone which has had various features added and altered to make it an exercise phone, and it seems to work. The S60 side is pretty much what you get on other current S60 3rd Edition models, so this review will concentrate on what the 5500 adds, and takes away, to make it a durable out-of-doors device.

The basics first though: the 5500 is a tri-band GSM Symbian S60 3rd Edition smartphone with EDGE, Bluetooth, infrared, pop-port, 8 megabytes of internal memory, a microSD memory card slot (which officially can take up to 1 gigabyte cards, but I’ve had reports of people using 2 gigabyte cards as well) and a 64 megabyte microSD card containing extra applications and licensed music tracks. The phone includes a 2 megapixel camera, an FM radio, a pedometer (step counter) and an LED torch. For those who want a more detailed point-by-point technical rundown on the 5500, you can find it on Nokia’s official 5500 page, and you might also want to also take a look at Rafe’s excellent hands-on preview of the 5500 prototype from May of this year.

According to Nokia the 5500 is “designed to withstand knocks, dust and water splashes”. I didn’t test these claims personally, but a Russian website called mforum.ru put the 5500 through its paces in some rather extreme situations, and it seemed pretty much indestructible. You can find out more about their tests by clicking here.

(Incidentally, if you’ve already have a 5500, make sure you insert the free microSD card and let it automatically install all the software on the phone as there’s some very handy things on there including several features discussed in this review.)

What’s It Like?

The 5500 is available in grey/black or grey/yellow, and there’s a third colour scheme, copper/orange, on the way.

The phone is fairly similar in size to ordinary non-smart monoblock/candybar phones, and comes encased in stainless steel, plastic and rubber. It feels very solid indeed, and as I found out, this is a phone designed to not just take knocks but actually be controlled by them (more on that later in the article). The steel and rubber battery cover is tightly sealed and requires a coin in order to turn the lock open. The SIM card and microSD card are both kept underneath the battery for extra protection, so obviously there’s no hotswapping possible. There are no gaps at all in the main casing, the buttons including the keypad are all under rubber surfaces, and there’s a rubber flap that covers the pop-port and charging jack.

The keypad buttons were surprisingly nice to use, they press easily and produce a satisfying click, despite being totally covered by rubber. For those who were worried about the narrower bottom keypad row, it works ok, I had no problems. The small buttons at the top had me worried when I saw a photo of the 5500, but in real life they also work fine as they’re at different levels on the surface so your thumb can distinguish them easily. The direction pad is smooth and easy to use, and it changes colour to let you know what mode the phone is in. The pen (edit) key has been moved to the right side of the phone, so you can hold it down with one hand while typing a message with the other. There’s an infrared port next to the pen key, and a mode key above it which switches between the standby screen, the music player and the pedometer fitness application (each mode also makes the direction pad glow a different colour: white, yellow or red). The mode button uses task switching so you can press it to start the music player and then press it again to access the pedometer, changing modes doesn’t kill the previous application. On the left side of the phone there’s a pair of volume control buttons and a Push-To-Talk button.

It’s also worth mentioning that the 5500 comes supplied with a hands-free pop-port headphone adaptor which contains a microphone, call answer button, volume control, standard headphone jack (standard headphones also  included), controls for the music player and radio, and a Push-To-Talk button.

Following in the footsteps of new PCs that expect you to burn your own Windows CDs, there’s no PC Suite CD with  the 5500, because you’re expected to download the latest version from Nokia’s web site (and to be fair, Nokia’s  software updates do seem to come more often now than in the past).

Using the phone as a phone feels good, it’s small enough to slip into any compartment in a bag or jacket and it feels a lot less nerdy-looking in public than something like an E61. The sound quality on calls is good, and the battery life is decent for a smartphone, there are about two or three days of use (including phone, texts, exercise app, email and radio) between charges. Thanks to using S60 3rd Edition the speed of the menus and applications are good, close to the speed of a normal phone, and greatly improved from the slow days of S60 1st edition phones. The 5500 also has Push-To-Talk capability, with a dedicated button on the phone itself and a button on the
hands-free adaptor.

Let’s Get Physical!

By far the most interesting and important exercise feature on the 5500 is the pedometer or step counter, which uses a 3D sensor to track the distance you’ve run, walked, rowed or cycled, and it can also be used on a step  machine (there are separate settings for all five of these exercise types). As far as I’m aware, this is the first and so far only phone to include a built-in pedometer. It’s not quite as precise as an expensive high quality separate pedometer, for example it doesn’t ask the user to measure their average step size, but crucially it is consistent, it registered more or less the same distance when I took the same route (I didn’t try it with cycling, rowing or a step machine though). It’s this consistency that makes it a useful fitness tool because you can use it to track and gradually build up your level of exercise over time so you can get fitter, which is exactly how pedometers are meant to be used.

To measure your current fitness you can also use the 5500 to help perform the Cooper test (for running and walking) and an exercise bike test, although you’ll need access to a stretch of ground of a known length for the Cooper test, and obviously an exercise bike for the bike test. You can set goals which you wish to achieve in several categories (distance, calories, time, number of exercises) along with the time period in which you must achieve them, and you can also switch on an optional voice commentary to tell you how you’re doing at regular intervals during the exercise so you don’t have to keep checking the display.

There’s a diary mode which lets you look back on how much exercise you’ve done in the past month, and the 5500 is also compatible with the Nokia Sports Manager application for Windows. The application lets you store the diary data from the pedometer on your PC, and view detailed graphs of your speed over distance or time during any particular exercise session you’ve ever done. Nokia Sports Manager can be downloaded for free from Nokia’s web site.

Included in the box is a special clip-on holder which lets you attach the phone to your clothes in order to give extra-accurate measurement using the pedometer, although I found simply keeping the phone in my
pocket was usually accurate enough.

Other Features

The 5500’s built-in music player (compatible with MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA and AMP) is the same application found on other S60 3rd Edition phones and can be controlled with the keypad, but thanks to the pedometer sensor it can also be controlled by just tapping the phone twice on its sides to skip forward or back, and on the front to pause or play. Just to emphasise that last point, you don’t actually push any buttons, you just tap the relevant part of the casing. It seemed to work fairly reliably, although it took a lot of getting used to and there’s a couple of seconds delay while the phone works out that you’ve tapped it. As a third option you can also use the included handsfree headphone adaptor which has FF, RW and Pause buttons on it, and works with standard walkman headphones. The built-in FM radio can also change stations using all three methods, and has visual radio compatibility too.

There are about a dozen exercise-themed licenced music tracks on the included microSD card to be used while training, or you can of course download and listen to your own tracks from your PC using the PC Suite’s Music Manager software or Windows Media Player integration. The included free microSD card is 64 megabytes, but you can buy your own microSD cards with up to 2 gigabytes in capacity. The sound quality of the music player and radio is good, and Nokia is apparently going to launch a “music edition” 5500 package later this year which includes a copper coloured phone and a high capacity microSD, but is otherwise identical to the standard sports package. The external speaker sound quality is also good but in mono as there’s just one external speaker.

If you get a message while running and don’t want to stop, you can make the phone read out loud any new text messages by tapping it twice. There’s a variety of language and voice packs for the speech function both built-in and available to download from Nokia’s web site (although curiously there’s no Finnish language pack yet), and judging by the names included with the packs it seems they want to turn speech packs into another way of customising your phone, like wallpapers or ringtones. Perhaps we’ll see celebrity speech packs appearing one day?

The pedometer has one final trick up its sleeve, it can sense the orientation of the phone when you’re standing still, and this function is exploited by the built-in Groove Labyrinth game. It’s a sort of real world update of Marble Madness, where you have to tilt the phone itself to steer a ball through a maze while collecting bonuses within a  time limit. The game is simple but fun and innovative. Conventional non-tilting games on the phone include the brilliant N-Gage game Snakes, and the frighteningly ubiquitous Sudoku.

The 5500 has a 2 megapixel camera which, like most cameraphones, is at its best in daylight and very brightly lit rooms, but goes grainy when used indoors at night. This can be helped to some extent by using the night mode option, although it’s still not as sharp as in daylight. Videos (at a much lower 176×144 resolution) with sound can also be captured using the camera. Pictures and videos can be sent as multimedia messages, transferred over Bluetooth and infrared, sent to your computer through the PC Suite application, or attached to emails. There’s no bundled photo editing software, but of course you can edit the pictures on your PC.

Here are some unaltered photos taken with the 5500’s camera, the first two in daylight and the third one inside a well-lit room: Example One , Example Two , Example Three

Screen Test

The screen is possibly the most controversial feature of the 5500 for those wanting a pure smartphone as it’s  physically much smaller than other S60 screens. A large screen would be more vulnerable to damage and the designers of an exercise phone clearly don’t want it to feel fragile in any way, so this may be a good tradeoff if you intend to use the 5500 for its stated purpose as a rugged outdoors phone. The screen is a technical improvement on previous generation S60s (208 by 208 pixels, 262 thousand colours) but the physical size is smaller, it measures about 3cm by 3cm, and the size of the text in some applications may be too small for some people’s eyesight. The fitness app uses very large font sizes so it works fine with no problems, and writing a text message produces no problems either, but things like viewing web sites on the smallest font setting may be tricky for those who have trouble reading ingredients lists on chocolate bars. You can install S60 3rd Edition apps on the 5500, but as they’re usually designed with a larger physical screen in mind, they can be tricky to read too. The standby screen is also a bit crowded if you have a music track running and calendar appointments and to-do notes visible.

The excellent new S60 HTML browser included with the phone loads most pages quickly and accurately, usually pretty much as they would appear on a PC browser, as the S60 browser is compatible with things like javascript and frames. If your eyes can cope with the smallest font size on the 5500’s screen, the browser can fit about 50% of a page’s width on-screen, so you don’t have to scroll too much. Unfortunately in a moment of madness someone at Nokia decided that the default browser on the 5500 wouldn’t be S60, but the awful outdated Services browser instead, and a link to Services appears on the main menu screen and the standby screen’s row of icons. It’s likely that most people will never even find the S60 browser as it requires an installation from the included microSD card and even then is buried in the “My Own” folder. To add to the confusion, the icon for Services is almost identical to the S60 Browser icon. It’s a mystery why Nokia persists in including the hopeless Services browser when a much better replacement is also included.

Symbian In The Closet

This leads to the most intriguing mystery about the 5500: why is Nokia keeping its smartphone status a secret? Nowhere on the official 5500 tech spec page does it mention “Series 60” or “smartphone”, yet the 5500 is technically speaking just as much an S60 smartphone as an N93 or an E61, you can even install S60 3rd edition programs on it. Does this phone represent some experiment to do with using Symbian across Nokia’s entire phone range? It can’t happen quite yet, the battery life needs to be extended and the S60 user interface needs to be made more intuitive, but that’s relatively fixable in future models (and the 5500’s colour-coded mode button seems to be a first step). What’s remarkable about the 5500 is that it has shown that you can cram so much into such a small, light and durable package: a smartphone almost as fast to use as a normal phone, a thick steel-rubber-plastic casing, a pedometer, a 2 megapixel camera, a memory card slot and an FM radio. It proves that smartphones no longer need to be bulky, and given this achievement it wouldn’t be at all surprising if we saw a RAZR-style S60 appear in the near future, especially as Nokia has recently announced that its priority now is to make thinner phones.

At The End Of The Day…

So, should you get a 5500? It depends on what you want. For some people it will be absolutely perfect, while for others the features won’t match their needs.

If you primarily need an exercise tool or a durable companion on the road, this is the bee’s knees. It’s clearly been designed to be a jogger’s friend, it has a music player and radio to keep you company, it’s the most well-protected and durable smartphone on the market, and it’s also (as far as I know) the only phone with a pedometer in it. You don’t even need to look at it to change tracks, alter stations, take calls or hear texts, so it’s good for keeping in your pocket or clipping to your clothes while you concentrate on collecting kilometres.

If you primarily need a pure smartphone, with mainly visual or high bandwidth uses, and want to browse lots of web sites, watch lots of videos or run lots of third party S60 apps, this probably isn’t the phone for you as the screen is physically so small and there’s no Wi-Fi or 3G compatibility.

If you need a mixture of these two extremes, then it’s up to you to weigh up what features are most important to you. Don’t get me wrong, this is a decent smartphone in its own right and it’s better than anything from previous smartphone generations, but obviously it has to be compared to other brand new models as well. The 5500 has been largely designed to work around you, rather than begging for your direct attention, and in this field it’s absolutely great.
In short, the Nokia 5500 is the first truly durable and portable smartphone, but that durability inevitably brings certain restrictions with it. If the E61 is a Limousine and the N93 is a Ferrari, the 5500 is a Range Rover.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Nokia_5500_Sport_Review1.php