Nokia 5530 XpressMusic

Nokia 5530 XpressMusic review: Winner by design

Introduction

The XpressMusic lineup is fired up and coming after you with all they’ve got – from QWERTY smartphones to touchscreens. In fact, with the arrival of 5530 XpressMusic, the Nokia music line has more touch phones than the Nseries. We told you, they’re dead serious about it.

With the 5800 XpressMusic shaping up as quite a blockbuster, Nokia had hardly any choice but to build on that momentum. The way up from the 5800 goes into Nseries territory really, so a lower spec’d device with an even sweeter price tag seems quite the right thing to do to reach the masses. And well, strategically expand the user base for the Touch UI edition of Symbian S60.

Nokia 5530 XpressMusic official photos

The Nokia 5800 offered value-for-money that very few could match. The 5530 comes in even more affordable but tries to deliver as much goodies as possible, pushing the value-for-money meter well towards the “must have” end of the scale. Here’s what the 5530 XpressMusic offers and what was left out to keep the cost down:
Key features:
2.9″ 16M-color TFT LCD 16:9 touchscreen display (360 x 640 pixels)
Symbian S60 5th edition
ARM 11 434 MHz CPU, 128MB RAM memory
3.2 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash and VGA@30fps video
Quad-band GSM support
Wi-Fi connectivity
microSD card memory expansion, ships with a 4GB card
FM radio with RDS
Bluetooth with A2DP and USB v2.0
Standard 3.5mm audio jack
Stereo speakers
Stylus, with its own compartment inside the phone
Proximity sensor for screen auto turn-off
Accelerometer sensor for automatic UI rotation, motion-based gaming and turn-to-mute
Office document viewer
OVI integration (direct image and video uploads, OVI Contacts)
Landscape on-screen virtual QWERTY keyboard
Excellent audio quality
Price tag on the cheap side
Nice battery life
Main disadvantages:
No 3G support
No built-in GPS receiver
Display has poor sunlight legibility
Default font size is a bit small due to the smaller screen
Somewhat limited 3rd party software availability
Average camera image quality
Video recording quality is unimpressive
Doesn’t charge off its microUSB port
No smart dialing
No DivX/XviD video support out of the box
No TV-out functionality

Trade-offs were obviously inevitable but many of the important features are on par with the 5800 – the CPU, the Wi-Fi support, the camera. And further on the positive side, the 5530 is much more compact than the 5800.

Nokia 5530 XpressMusic live shots

The XpressMusic badge usually guarantees great music experience – from the audio quality to the way music is organized, played and delivered. With Nokia’s recent track record of excellent audio quality in the headphone department and the pair of nice sounding stereo speakers, the 5530 is a mini-jukebox.

What hurts it the most is the lack of 3G, especially for those with unlimited data plans. Others will barely wait to jump at this affordable touch-operated and WLAN-enabled smartphone. As always, we’re here to help you make the decision.

Size comparison between the iPhone, the 5530 and the 5730

It’s time that we set off exploring the Nokia 5530 ins and outs – so join us on the next page where a proper unboxing is due.

Retail package on a budget

The retail package was perhaps the best part of the 5800 XpressMusic deal – you got a bag of goodies and at a bargain price too. The 5530 is not as keen to please covering only the basics – no TV-out cable, not even an extra plectrum-shaped stylus. The 4GB microSD card is probably the most valuable item on the list.

No surprises in the box this time

The supplied Nokia WH-205 headset is one-piece but it seems better than standard (it’s identical to the one we found in the Nokia 5730 box). The white earbuds don’t match the color scheme of the phone though. Alternative headphones are of course an option given the 3.5 mm audio jack but you’ll loose the call/music remote.

The enclosed microUSB cable is quite short – the 20cm variety they usually ship with lower midrange Nokia phones.
Nokia 5530 XpressMusic 360-degree spin

Nokia 5530 XpressMusic stands at 104 x 49 x 13 mm in its full touchscreen shine. That totals a volume of 68cc – almost 20% less than the 5800. You’ll immediately appreciate the compact appearance and feel of the phone. In fact we were quite surprised at how palm-friendly it really is – those press shots can hardly prepare you for that.

The weight of 107g compares very favorably against other touchscreen phones in the class though it’s just 2 grams less than the 5800. Considering the reduction in size, we were hoping for a bit more.

We thought that the 5800 felt very well in hand and pocket, but the thinner and shorter 5530 does much better. Single-handed operation is a breeze.

Design and construction

The elongated body is the most notable design feature of the XpressMusic touchscreens. The 16:9 display is of course the reason and the aspect ratio is great for watching widescreen videos.

The touchscreen form factor is limiting to the choices of styling and with the 5530 XpressMusic, Nokia tried to stay as close as possible to their current in-house design.

The styling is simple but by no means cheaper than the 5800 XpressMusic

Up front, the touchscreen is recessed into its frame but that doesn’t get in the way of accessing the screen edges. The color accents on the sides are a nice touch and there will be several combinations available – Red on black, Blue on white, Grey on black, Pink on white, Yellow on white. The pink version will have a floral dotted pattern the others lack.

The phone is noticeably thinner than its predecessor and is the size of non-touchscreen phones – it’ll squeeze into pockets just like that.

The front is understandably dominated by the touchscreen, all 2.9 inches of it. Loosing 0.3 of an inch from the screen diagonal is a fair trade off for the device getting full 7 millimeters shorter. We’ll get back to the screen later, as it sure deserves proper inspection.

The front of the 5530 is completely touch-operated – even the call keys and the menu keys are touch-sensitive. The Media key is here again – it triggers a drop down menu of shortcuts to media and web. A proximity sensor also takes part of the real estate up front.

Nothing says “multimedia” louder than a touch-enabled Media key

The Call and End keys, and the menu key in the middle, are just under the display. A press-and-hold on the menu key launches the task manager – in the long-standing Symbian tradition – to let you easily switch between running applications and can also terminate apps.

A certain downside perhaps is that the touch sensitive keys need more thumb pressure than the touchscreen itself – at times that could be confusing for users who have all the right to expect one and the same response from their touch input.

The three keys below the display

While we’re still at it, let’s check out the grills top and bottom. Those in fact hide the stereo speakers – perfect layout for watching videos landscape.

Design and construction (continued)

The top of the Nokia 5530 XM is quite plain and features the power button only. It’s quite thin and stiff making it a pain to work with – aside from switching the phone on and off, we didn’t use it much – perhaps switching profiles or locking the handset with it just isn’t worth the effort.

The top is pretty plain

The 5530 bottom is more crowded – from left to right you can see the charger plug, the 3.5 mm audio jack and the microUSB port. The lanyard eyelet and the stylus are in the left and right corner of the bottom respectively.

A bunch of connection ports at the bottom

The microUSB connector is hidden under a protective lid to prevent it from filling up with dust, while the 3.5mm audio jack is exposed.

Unfortunately, the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic doesn’t charge off the microUSB port.

The right side of Nokia 5530 hosts the volume rocker, the screen-lock switch and the camera key. The screen lock switch is an essential shortcut – the implementation in the 5530 is quite ergonomic and friendly. Locking/unlocking of the screen is marked by a short vibration.

The volume rocker is accompanied by the screen lock switch and the camera key

The volume rocker – serving as a zoom lever too – is quite thin and suffers poor press. The shutter key is slightly better – the half-press is quite distinct but the button gets quite stiff towards full press.

On the left you’ll find the microSD card slot and the SIM compartment – both under a single extra long protective cover. Yep, that’s right – the SIM card gets in and out on the side of the handset – though you can’t quite hot-swap it really.

Two card slots share the same cover

You still need to remove your rear cover and battery to eject the SIM card. To do that you need the help of a sharp object such as your stylus – the SIM card just waits for a light push from the inside. Just like on the 5800 XpressMusic there’s a little scheme drawn on the inside of the battery cover to explain how it works.

The microSD card is hot swappable but a bit hard to get to as it’s quite recessed – the stylus comes in handy here too.

The back side of Nokia 5530 XpressMusic features the 3 megapixel autofocus camera, which comes with a dual-LED flash. The other thing of interest is the stylus compartment. The black plastic stylus smoothly slides in and fits securely.

The 3 megapixel snapper and the accompanying LED flash

Removing the rear cover reveals the Nokia 1000 mAh Li-Ion BL-4U battery. To open the cover you put your fingernail in the small slit on top and gently pull and pry to lift up.

Quoted at the respectable 336 hours of standby and 4 hours 54 minutes of talk time, along with 27 hours of music playback, the battery is likely to keep you going for quite some time.

Our test revealed the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic as a gifted long-distance performer. The handset endured some good 5 days on a single charge, which included the moderate 1 hour of talk time, 30 minutes of web browsing over Wi-Fi and shooting some 20-30 photos plus some general tinkering.

The good ol’ BL-4U battery makes another appearance

The general build-quality of Nokia 5530 XpressMusic is really ok with the strange exception of the wobbly back cover. The phone is well built overall and we do think it even looks better than the 5800 XpressMusic. But the battery cover ruined it for us. It doesn’t lock securely in place and wobbles all the time you’re using the phone.

Nokia 5530 XpressMusic held in hand

Anyway, the same build issues plagued the 5800 too but the 5530 XpressMusic seems to have more excuses besides the lower price. It’s obviously more compact, plus the front is framed in stainless steel, which should make it very durable and is a nice break from the all-plastic image of XpressMusic phones.
The screen is a mixed bag

The Nokia 5530 XpressMusic has a 2.9-inch display. In touchscreen terms that diagonal probably qualifies as small, not to mention that devices such as the original HTC Touch Diamond and LG Arena offer pretty much the same screen estate but noticeably higher resolution.

When compared to the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic we do find the screen a wee bit on the small side. By offering the same resolution on a smaller area has inevitably made most of the UI graphics and text look smaller. The same goes for the QWERTY keyboard as well. It’s a good thing though that at least the system font size can be tweaked to the user liking – we do fancy it bumped up a little.

Nokia 5530 XpressMusic uses a resistive touchscreen as opposed to the capacitive displays in devices like Samsung Omnia HD and Apple iPhone 3G. This means there’s a need for a bit of extra pressure to the screen for a click to be registered. Sensitivity is definitely better than 5800 XpressMusic, though not even near Samsung S8000 Jet levels which blurs the lines between resistive and capacitive.

Resistive screens can be used with a stylus though (or fingers with gloves). When using the stylus, the 5530 display is absolutely on par with any competing touchscreen device. On the other hand, sensitivity to fingers and the reasonably finger-friendly interface will make you forget about the stylus (unless you’re really into poking at your screen).

Unfortunatelly, display legibility under direct sunlight is quite an issue. It’s really poor, making it hard to find a proper angle for working with the phone on a bright sunny day.

The display has remarkable picture quality but poor sunlight legibility

Vibration feedback for touchscreen control is also available throughout the user interface. The vibration strength is configurable through the Profiles menu, but even at its highest setting it’s still on the low side.

User interface is maturing

The 5530 is the budget version of the 5800 XpressMusic but it inevitably takes advantage of all the development that took place since the launch of the first touch-enabled Symbian S60 handset. In a way, if the 5800 had the 5530’s interface since day one, it would’ve made users a lot happier. Of course, all the enhancements should be readily available to the 5800 XpressMusic through firmware updates but it doesn’t make it any less of a valid point that the 5530 is just more mature and user-friendly right out of the box.

S60 gone touchscreen

The first thing to note of course is kinetic scrolling which, in fact, works quite well and almost throughout the user interface – from file browser through gallery to contacts (and even web browser, though with quite spotty implementation).

The good news is that finger scrolling has been improved everywhere as far as lists of items are concerned. You scroll much like with the Apple iPhone – you push it one way and it moves in the oppsite direction as if you are pushing the actual list to the side. It’s one of the biggest positive changes compared to the Nokia 5800 Xpressmusic.

Unfortunately scrolling icons is still the same old way – you either grab the side scrollbar (it’s so lame that we have to do that more than often) or you stick your thumb on the icons and push the highlighted item in the direction you want the whole block to move, which is not only counter-intuitive, but also quite consufusing (due to the inconsistency with lists scrolling).

But getting back to the updates, the Contacts bar on the Home screen has now been improved and it’s now side-scrollable and thus accommodates a lot more phonebook shortcuts. A bit of nuisance we came across on the early 5800 XpressMusic is also sorted now. Turning the handset landscape in text-input mode automatically brings a full QWERTY keypad on screen.

Of course, there’s still a long way to go. We’d still have to wait for auto-rotation of the homescreen, smart dial and a more elaborate Active Standby – with room for the WLAN scanner on screen, for instance. Widgets are obviously Nseries stuff so we won’t even mention thumb-scrollable multiple homescreen panes, which the touchscreen competition has long since had.

Nokia claims that from firmware v 20.0.012 onwards the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic processor is running at 434 MHz (the original CPU speed was 369 MHz), so performance wise the 5800 should get up to the speed of 5530. The 5530 XpressMusic does feel zippy and we are yet to see how the 5800 feels with the extra CPU legroom.

S60 5th is in essence a direct translation of D-pad and soft-key action into touch. Although it has its benefits, the result is hardly the most fluent and intuitive touchscreen interface there is. Scrolling and accessing items across the interface is nothing like other touch platforms we’ve tried. On the other hand, soft-keys work just fine and enhance usability compared to other touch phones.

So, the user experience with S60 5th is a mixed bag and what you think of it will quite depend on your background. If you know your way around S60, you’ll be quite at home with the 5530 XpressMusic interface. But if you come from an alternative touchscreen platform you’ll be busy climbing a bit of a learning curve.

Opening an item in any of the listed submenus requires not one, but two presses – one to select, and another one to confirm the action. Now that’s something that you don’t normally see in other touch phones. You get used to it with time, but the main issue here is that the interface logic is different when you deal with icons instead of lists.

When the opened menu uses icons to represent items as opposed to lists, then a single click usually does the job.

The scrolling as described earlier is equally confusing due to the two contradictory approaches. At least kinetic scrolling will make you feel way more comfortable than those first 5800 XpressMusic users. Plus, it sure shows Nokia are serious enough about polishing the Symbian touch platform.
Homescreen and main menu

The main menu structure leaves no doubt you’re on Symbian turf. Icons are set in a 3 x 4 grid or a list and you can freely reorder. Screen orientation can be set to change automatically thanks to the accelerometer.

The homescreen however is one spot where auto-rotation is badly missed. The screen estate would’ve been much more usable. For one, more shortcuts would’ve been visible on the Contacts bar. It’s scrollable anyway – that’s true – but if the 5730 XpressMusic can do it, why can’t the touchscreen variety.

Having mentioned that, accommodating a touchscreen has taken its toll on the good old Symbian S60 3rd home screen. The 5730 XpressMusic is an excellent point of reference. The two handsets have very similar interfaces and the advantages of the S60 3rd are obvious: auto-rotation of the homescreen, six slots on the Shortcut bar (as opposed to four in S60 5th – they need to be thumbable though, hence the smaller count), WLAN wizard available on the active standby screen (as opposed to email notification only on the 5530).

Otherwise, the homescreen layout of the 5530 XpressMusic is quite typical Symbian and very similar to the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic – all the status indicators are at the top, plus the clock and the calendar.

A single press on the clock starts the clock application (with an option for setting up an alarm) while tapping on the date opens a drop-down menu where you can either launch the calendar application or change the currently active profile (making using the the stiff Power key for that purpose redundant).

Calendar, profiles and clock just a touch away

You can also access the connectivity menu from here, by tapping around the battery status indicator, which is the quickest way to initiate a WLAN search. It is not quite as quick as the 3rd edition plug-in where you only needed a single click for the purpose but it is better than nothing.

The Contacts bar follows right beneath: each contact is represented by the contact photo and their first name – and it’s possible to have three contacts displayed at a time but the list is scrollable left or right.

For each contact you can add an RSS feed, so we guess a nice trick is to add a contact that isn’t a person just so that you’ll have quick access to your favorite feeds on the homescreen.

Selecting a contact from the Contact bar brings up a screen with info on the contact (different from you get if you select the contact from the Contacts list). It has the contact photo, name and phone number. Underneath are four buttons – call, send message, update feed and settings.

Further down is an area that shows the communication history for that contact – both calls and messages. And finally, at the bottom there are the top two lines from an RSS feed.

The new Contacts bar • viewing a contact from the Contacts bar

Under the Contacts list, it’s pretty much standard Active Standby but with fewer slots. You only get email notification showing the number of unread messages, along with the sender and subject of the most recent message. The blank area beneath is reserved for the music player and radio mini apps – they get displayed when either is set to play in the background.

At the very bottom of the homescreen is the Shortcuts bar. Both the Contacts and the Shortcuts tab are optional and can be hidden.

Contacts bar theme, the Contacts bar and the shortcuts tab are optional • Shortcuts bar • Basic

The Media key, placed above the screen on the right, is a shortcut to the Music player, Gallery, Ovi Share, Videos, and the web browser. It’s an excellent control that offers quick access to the handset’s multimedia features. It’s haptic-enabled too.

With the Media key some of most frequently used features are only a tap away

The Nokia 5530 XpressMusic features a task manager, which is launched by a press-and-hold on the menu key. The task manager itself is identical to what you get on Symbian S60 3.2 devices. Much like in the previous version of the UI, it appears on top of every pop-up menu. There’s no C key on that one of course to close running applications – instead you tap the app’s icon to display two virtual buttons: Open and Exit.

The task-manager

Phonebook brings no surprises

Nokia 5530 XpressMusic uses a phonebook that’s identical to what previous versions of the UI have offered. Except for the whole touch thingy, that is. The phonebook itself has virtually unlimited capacity and functionality is among the best we’ve seen. Kinetic scrolling is enabled in the 5530 contact list and that’s a welcome enhancement.

Contacts can be freely ordered by first or last name and can naturally be searched by gradual typing of any of the names. You can also set whether the contacts from the SIM card, the phone memory and the service numbers will get displayed.

The phonebook

When searching for a contact you make use of a clever dynamic keypad, which shows you only the letters that correspond to actual contacts. Once you type in a first letter, their number decreases leaving only the ones that actually make up real contacts names (in our case – “E” and “X”). It may sound perplexing but it’s a great tool. If Nokia have some name for this search engine, we bet it should be something along the lines of “Smart search” or even “Smart match”. If you don’t happen to have a name for that one, you guys over at Nokia, feel free to use those – you’re welcome.

Searching for a contact

Editing a contact offers a variety of preset fields and you can replicate each of them as many times as you like. You can also create new fields if you happen to be able to think of one. Personal ringtones and videos are also available for assigning. If you prefer, you may group your contacts and give each group a specific ringtone.

Viewing a contact, editing a contact offers a huge variety of fields

The Call log keeps track of your recent communications. The application itself comes in two flavors – accessed by pressing the Call key on the stand-by screen or from the main menu. The first one brings 20 call records in each of its tabs for outgoing, received and missed calls.

If you access the Log application from the main menu, you’ll see a detailed list of all your network communications for the past 30 days. These include messages, calls and data transfers (even WLAN connections are included).

The call log is there to keep track of your communications
Telephony: still no smart-dial

We didn’t experience any problems with the in-call performance of 5530 XpressMusic. There is nothing of the earpiece issues that plagued the 5800 XpressMusic at launch. Voice quality is good on both ends of calls, the earpiece is crisp and there were no reception problems whatsoever.

The only real downside is the still missing smart dialing functionality. Some may argue it’s not as essential on a touchscreen but most of the competition has it duly covered. Not to mention WinMo devices have a very elaborate smart dial system that even searches in your Calls log for numbers that are not in your contacts list.

Voice dialing is an option with the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic as with mostly any other phone. The voice dialing mode is activated once you press and hold the Call key. It is fully speaker-independent and doesn’t require prerecording the names of your contacts. Bear in mind though, that if you have multiple numbers assigned to a contact, the first or the default one gets dialed.

The dialing pad

Thanks to the built-in accelerometer, you can silence an incoming call (or an alarm) by simply flipping the handset over. The proximity sensor makes sure the screen turns automatically off when you pick it up to your ear.

Making a call, call options

Using the hardware screen-lock switch you can not only unlock the phone but also silence it.

We also ran our traditional loudspeaker test on Nokia 5530 XpressMusic. The handset is pretty much on par with the N97 and a bit better than its more capable and expensive predecessor, the 5800 XpressMusic. Subjectively, music sounds great on the 5530 speakers.Speakerphone test Voice, dB Pink noise/ Music, dB Ringing phone, dB Overall score
Apple iPhone 3G 66.1 62.1 71.7 Below Average
Nokia 5800 XpressMusic 75.7 66.5 68.5 Good
Nokia 5530 XpressMusic 70.6 69.7 75.7 Good
LG KM900 Arena 70.9 68.2 78.3 Good
LG KP500 Cookie 78.1 75.7 82.7 Excellent
Samsung S5230 Star 82.7 76.0 80.2 Excellent

More info on our test can be found here.
Touchscreen messaging quite adequate

The messaging menu hasn’t been modified at all compared to what we saw on Nokia 5800. But what needed to be fixed got fixed.

Nokia 5530 XpressMusic supports all common message types – SMS, MMS and email. They all share a common intuitive editor which by this point should be quite familiar to everyone.

The 5530 XpressMusic uses a common editor for your texts and emails

Nokia 5530 XpressMusic also features the dedicated editor for instant recording of audio messages. Much like with Symbian S60 v3.2 you can either record the message on the spot or use a sound clip from the phone memory. The interface of all the messengers is quite similar too.

Delivery reports can be turned on – they pop up once the message reaches the addressee, and are then saved in a separate folder in the messaging sub-menu.

When you are exiting the message editor without having sent the message, you get prompted to save it in Drafts or discard it.

Here might just be the right time to mention the input options on Nokia 5530 XpressMusic. The handset offers a standard alphanumeric on-screen keypad, which automatically turns into a full QWERTY keyboard when you tilt the handset thanks to the accelerometer. The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic didn’t do that at first.

Alphanumeric keypad and QWERTY keyboard

Finally, the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic offers handwriting recognition, which did a rather decent job, recognizing almost all the letters we scribbled in the box. You can improve its performance by taking the handwriting training – where you actually show the handset how you write each different letter.

Handwriting recognition worked fine for us

The email client is really nice, there to meet almost any emailing needs. The easy setup we found in the latest Nokia handsets is also available with the 5530 XpressMusic. It has been touched here and there too, so it needs even less input.

If you are using any public email service (it has to be among the over 1000 supported providers), all you have to do is enter your username and password to start enjoying email on the go. The phone downloads all the needed settings to get you going in no time.

Besides, it now prompts choosing whether you prefer POP or IMAP access to mail providers that support both. With the previous version of the email setup wizard that was not configurable. Nicely done!

The email client gives no reasons to grudge

Multiple email accounts and various security protocols are supported, so you can bet almost any mail service will run trouble-free on your Nokia 5530 XpressMusic.

The client can download headers only or entire messages, and can be set to automatically check mail at a given interval. A nice feature allows you to schedule sending email next time an internet connection is available. This can save you some data traffic charges since you can use the next available WLAN connection instead.

There is also support for attachments, signatures and generally, you can hardly think of something important that the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic lacks. Furthermore screen resolution and size make reading your emails a better experience than on almost any Eseries handset.

File manager is remarkable

The file manager is yet another aspect where the pedigree counts big time. With the soft keys at the bottom you can almost forget that you are looking at a new device.

The Symbian file management system has been top notch for quite a while now, and you can hardly think of anything to change. The application can basically do anything you can think of with your files – moving, copying renaming, sorting or sending – you name it. You can also password-protect your memory card if you see fit.

The file manager has extensive functionality

Searching for a specific file or directory is also available with the phone. All you need to remember is a part of the desired name and where it was located (phone memory or memory card) the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic will find it in no time. This is actually a shortcut to the Search app naturally found in the Web submenu.

Searching for Dexter
Music player needs a cooler look

The music player (identical to the 5800 XpressMusic one) is very similar to the S60 3rd edition versions. A few cosmetic changes here and there and touch-optimization is all that sets it apart.

Not that the music player isn’t capable enough or something – it surely has more than enough functionality. However some more eye-candy would have been quite welcome. After all, touch interfaces are usually mostly about being fun to use and nice to look at.

Your music library is automatically sorted by artist, album, genre and composer and searching tracks by gradual typing is available. You can also create your own playlists in no time.

The process of adding tracks to the library is as simple as choosing the refresh option. You won’t need to do that if you upload the music via the proprietary PC Suite application.

The Nokia 5530 XpressMusic music player

With the huge number of supported formats you will hardly ever come across an audio file that the phone won’t handle. Album art is also supported and if you don’t like the default sound of the device you can enhance it by applying one of the five equalizer presets and if they seem insufficient you can create new ones in a matter of seconds.

Six equalizer presets are available • creating a new one

Quite naturally, the player can also be minimized to play in background. In this case a tab appears on the stand-by screen indicating the currently running track. You can pause the current track or skip to next/previous. Of course, you can go back to the full music player app using the dedicated Media key above the screen.

Music player running in the background
Fine-tuned audio quality

Well it may have been simply a marketing gimmick in the beginning but XpressMusic is now definitely meaning something. The audio quality of the other Nokia handsets is also quite steadily improving so that now they stand pretty close to the top of the pyramid.

Save for the slightly high intermodulation distortion, Nokia 5530 XpressMusic performs excellently in every part of our test. The frequency response is great with the slightly larger number that appears in the table is only due to the extreme heights of the audible range being slightly cut off.

Compared to the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic the 5530 has an edge in the stereo crosstalk reading, while in the other elements trails behind by the slightest of margins. Here goes the table and the graph so you can see for yourselves.Test Frequency response Noise level Dynamic range THD IMD + Noise Stereo crosstalk
Nokia 5530 XpressMusic +0.11, -0.84 -90.9 90.8 0.010 0.454 -90.6
Nokia 5800 XpressMusic +0.09, -0.77 -92.2 92.1 0.013 0.297 -75.0
Nokia 5730 XpressMusic +0.10, -0.72 -91.3 91.1 0.0086 0.360 -90.3
Nokia 5630 XpressMusic +0.13, -0.26 -94.0 94.8 0.466 0.876 -97.3
Nokia 5130 XpressMusic +0.04, -0.16 -89.9 89.0 0.0033 0.014 -83.6
Nokia 5310 XpressMusic +0.29, -1.69 -94.4 92.0 0.015 0.491 -73.8
Nokia 5220 XpressMusic +0.29, -1.64 -91.7 90.3 0.012 0.612 -73.1
Samsung S5230 Star +1.02, -2.41 -88.0 87.8 0.0045 0.222 -82.3
LG KP500 Cookie +0.13, -0.32 -87.5 81.9 0.125 0.150 -63.0
Apple iPod Touch 2G +0.04, -0.05 -91.4 91.5 0.0027 0.012 -90.0
Apple iPhone 3GS +0.01, -0.05 -92.1 92.1 0.0035 0.011 -95.0

Nokia 5530 XpressMusic frequency response graph

You can learn more about the whole testing process here.
Video player below expectations

Watching a video on the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic is generally a pleasure. The built-in video player has decent functionality but only supports a very limited number of codecs, no DivX and XviD out of the box.

The built-in video player

The Nokia PC suite has a built-in application that automatically converts all kinds of video files to the format and resolution your phone supports. The automatic converter though seems to compress the videos too much even at the highest quality setting and they look over pixilated but so far it’s the easiest way of getting compatible video to your handset.

The video player itself only works in fullscreen landscape mode but, since anything else would have made the widescreen display useless, this is understandable. When in fullscreen, a tap on the screen shows the controls which are normally hidden.

Using the RealPlayer or the Video center (accessed by the Media key positioned above the display), you can not only watch the videos saved in the phone’s memory or in the memory card but also to stream Internet video content. Of course, you can always go to YouTube.com.
FM radio with RDS

The FM radio on Nokia 5530 XpressMusic has a neat and simple interface and can automatically scan and save the available stations in your area. It also has RDS support and automatic scanning for an alternative frequency. This means that if you travel, the 5530 XpressMusic will take care of auto-switching to the frequencies of your selected radio station.

The FM radio interface is quite cool

The radio station name gets displayed with cool effects across the whole screen, while the rest of the RDS readings are printed in nicely legible text on a line at the bottom. Perhaps we would have preferred this font a bit larger, but it isn’t that much of an issue.

Image gallery seems ok

The gallery of Nokia 5530 XpressMusic is identical to the one of its senior 5800 XpressMusic sibling. It is nicely touch optimized and there are sweep gestures enabled for flipping through photos displayed fullscreen.

You can sort images by date, title or size and you can also copy, move and delete them. Sending them via Bluetooth, email, MMS or sharing them online is also available straight from here.

The image gallery

The default view is portrait but you can go to landscape automatically thanks to the built-in accelerometer. A slide show is also available but it doesn’t have as many customizable settings as on some Nseries handsets.

Checking out a single photo

The photos can also be zoomed in to see more detail. Zoom is controlled via either the volume rocker or an on-screen touch slider. In all other cases, images are displayed full screen.

Overall, picture browsing is nicely fast and smooth, zooming speed feels faster than on 5800 Xpressmusic. There is still some lag involved but it’s more acceptable now.
Uninspiring camera

Nokia 5530 XpressMusic has a 3.15 MP camera with a maximum image resolution of 2048×1536 pixels. Clearly not much of a shooter, the 5530 is about equal to the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic.

The camera key is a bit stiff on full press, but not to much of a usability issue.

The camera UI is identical to the Nokia 5530 elders – the 5800 XpressMusic and the N97. All the settings are squeezed in a common menu, except for the flash, which has its own dedicated onscreen shortcut. The usability of this layout is no match for what some other manufacturers offer on their full-touch handsets (think Samsung for starters).

The camera UI needs more work

On the positive side, the range of settings on the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic is extensive enough: from manual white balance and ISO to exposure compensation, sharpness and contrast. Various effects are also at hand, labeled color tones.

We were quite surprised to find that Nokia 5530 XpressMusic has a geotagging option in its menu system. We guess Nokia got carried away with copying the 5800 software and forgot there is no GPS chip onboard. And no, it doesn’t record cell ID either.

The viewfinder doesn’t occupy the whole screen – a bar on the right is reserved for the touch controls. This way you get to see the whole frame rather than having a part of it cropped due to the aspect differences of the display and the sensor.

You have a settings button that launches a semi-transparent overlay of all available shooting options, a dedicated Flash button and an on-screen shutter key. Now, that last one is absolutely redundant – it doesn’t have a half press/full press action to properly handle auto focus. It would’ve been much better used for another feature instead.

As far as image quality is concerned Nokia 5530 XpressMusic fails to really impress. Its photos are way too noisy, especially the sky areas. The amount of resolved detail is decent but the contrast of the photos is too low. Since we doubt that most users will post-process the photos from this phones, we wish Nokia went for a punchier output. On the other hand, this might have escalated noise issues so who knows.

Nokia 5530 XpressMusic camera samples
Synthetic resolution

We also snapped our resolution chart with the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic. You can check out what that test is all about here.

Nokia 5530 XpressMusic resolution chart photo • 100% crops

Nokia 5630 resolution chart photo • 100% crops

Compared to its 5630 XpressMusic cousin, the Nokia 5530 performs slightly better, having a slight edge in both horizontal and vertical resolution. This is in no small part due to the more aggressive noise reduction of the 5630.

In general, the the camera of the Nokia 5530 is average at most. There are far better 3 megapixel shooters available but it might do the trick if you only take photos occasionally and hardly ever bother downloading them to a computer.
VGA videos are poor

Video recording is the better part of the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic imaging skills. The phone can shoot VGA footage at 30fps. Sounds like pretty decent quality for the class, doesn’t it? Well in this price range, they’re probably among the best you can get, but subjectively they look rather poor. The relatively high compression applied results in too many artifacts.

Videos are captured in MPEG-4 format and can have automatic or manual white balance. The other available settings are night mode, exposure and color effects. You can also have the LED flash on to act as a video light.

Good connectivity for the price

The lack of high-speed data on Nokia 5530 XpressMusic is probably damning its ambitions in more developed 3G markets but in countries where fast network data is still expensive or non-existent, Wi-Fi will probably be much appreciated. GPS is another unticked box on the connectivity sheet but the rest of it is pretty well covered.

Both USB and Bluetooth are version 2.0 and the latter naturally also supports A2DP. Unfortunately, the 5530 doesn’t charge off its microUSB port unlike all other recent Nokia phones.

Wi-Fi with UPnP is also at hand. In fact, the Wi-Fi connectivity is certainly one of the key features of the Nokia 5530 – the handset is one of the cheapest Wi-Fi enabled full-touchscreen handset currently on the market.

In the absence of 3G you will have to rely on GPRS and EDGE for you network data transfers. The quad-band support means that the handset is fully capable of world-wide roaming.

The Nokia 5530 XpressMusic also comes complete with a memory card slot. Coupled with a card reader it can usually give you the fastest data transfer rates.

And finally, there’s the standard 3.5mm audio jack, which allows you to use your own headphones, but doesn’t have TV-out functionality.
Web browser moves forward

The web browser of Nokia 5530 XpressMusic has seen some improvement over its first version introduced with the 5800. Kinetic scrolling is certainly the biggest change but the overall browsing speed also seems a bit better. Unluckily, the lower speed of EDGE compared to 3G offsets that advantage on most occasions.

As you’ll see the touch web browser has quite a lot of modern features:
The page rendering algorithm is quite good
There are also five different font sizes to pick from
There’s username/password and web forms storing and auto-filling system
There is also a built-in RSS reader
A download manager allows you to download files while web browsing
There’s also a popup blocker
A minimap is available for finding your way around large pages
And the Find on page feature allows you search for keywords
There’s suport for opening multiple windows simultaneously
The visual history is a nice bonus that can help you find a page you’ve visited more easily
And finally, the web browser has support for Flash and Flash video, which means you can enjoy Flash videos straight in your browser.

The web browser improves steadily

We did notice though occasional web browser crashes. That usually happened when there were many other applications running, so it might be attributed to depleting RAM. Closing applications you are currently using will help but that’s not the best way to serve users. Especially since users have no left those applications deliberately running in the background but it’s more of an automatic thing.

Another disadvantage is concerning the newly introduced kinetic scrolling – it is certainly a nice feature to have on board and all but its implementation in the web browser needs polishing. The scrolling is there but it lacks the momentum you see when scrolling listed items in the menu and you’ll need several sweeps for even moderately-sized pages. Besides, it gets pretty bumpy at times, instead of the smooth scrolling on some competitors. Fingers crossed that and the awkward process management will be addressed in a firmware update some time soon.

Continuing our grudges with the web browser, if you happen to be in portrait mode and choose the fit-to-width zoom level, the text does not automatically center onscreen. Instead you will have to align it manually, which is nonsense really.

Double tapping any text zooms it in on screen, but again, the text doesn’t fit the zoomed area and you still need to scroll sideways. Plus the double tapping magic doesn’t seem to work every time. At times you need to tap it more than 3 or 4 times to actually get it to work – it’s quite random really.

And finally, we’d really like to see an option to open links in new window.

So, generally speaking, the S60 touch-browser is going in the right direction but there’s still a lot of work to be done to catch up with the rest. The improved usability is a nice start but it’s nowhere near the iPhone or Android standards. The same goes for the resolution, which is a lot better than the QVGA non-touch predecessors but hardly a match for the WVGA.
Time-management capabilities are good enough

The S60 5th edition organizer is pretty well geared although its applications are already in need of a refreshment – especially on a touchscreen. Some of the apps are starting to look boring and dated, staying the same for over 3 years now.

Just as with the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and N97, developers were hesitant to put the touch input to some good usage and maybe some cool new features. They have only gone as far as to touch-optimize the S60 3rd edition apps.

The calendar has four different view modes – monthly, weekly, daily and to-do, which allows you to check all your To-Do entries regardless of their date. There are four types of events available for setting up – Meeting, Memo, Anniversary and To-do. Each event has unique fields of its own, and some of them allow an alarm to be activated at a preset time to act as a reminder.

The calendar

Strange enough, the Quickoffice application wasn’t preinstalled on our Nokia 5530 XpressMusic. Instead we had to go and get it from the Nokia download center. Considering it’s free of charge we are willing to let that one go.

With Quickoffice you can view Word, Excel and PowerPoint files seamlessly but of course, editing documents comes for a fee. The PDF viewer was missing too at the start but again the Nokia download center solved our problem.

Update 06 October: Many users contacted us, saying that they are unable to download the Quickoffice app from their handsets. With the developer’s official website also not offering it for download that means that those users can only get the paid version of the app. That is quite a disappointment considering that it would cost Nokia next to nothing to preinstall what is one of the most useful apps on board. Not cool Nokia, not cool.

Viewing documents with the Quickoffice is hassle-free

The calculator application is well familiar but it lacks the functionality of some of its competitors. The square root is the most complicated function it handles and this is no longer considered an achievement. If all you do with it is split the bill at the bar though, you’re free to disregard that last sentence.

The calculator

The organizer package also includes a great unit converter voice recorder, as well as the Notes application.

The converter and the voice recorder that come preinstalled

The alarm application allows you to set up as many alarms as you want, each with its own name, trigger day and repeat pattern. If this seems too complicated, there is a quick alarm setup where all you do is set the time and you’re good to go. Thanks to the built-in accelerometer you can also snooze the alarm by simply flipping your phone.

The alarm clock application

There’s a couple of games too

A couple of accelerometer-based games are what you will find preinstalled on the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic. The titles are the same as in the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic – the slightly childish Bounce and the Racing Thunder GT racing simulator.

You can opt between touchscreen or accelerometer control. Handling is decently precise and while it cannot match hardware controls, the experience is good enough.

There’s a couple of games preinstalled

In case you are not happy with the games offered you can find additional titles at the Nokia download center or 3rd party developers. The Nokia 5530 XpressMusic doesn’t have N-Gage support at this stage so that is not an option.
Final words

The Nokia 5530 XpressMusic certainly seems both well reasoned and reasonable. It is a clear attempt to bring the S60 5th edition to the hands of a larger audience, which in turn should motivate a bigger developer community, which in turn will make the platform appealing to an even wider user group, which in turn would make Nokia lots of money. But we digress. Considering the appeal of the handset, it sure looks an important step towards bringing the touch-enabled S60 to par with the more mature competitors.

In addition, the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic is welcome to fill a gap in the company touchscreen portfolio. Now that it has the entry-level covered, Nokia has complete supply with the mid-range 5800 and the high-end N97. We’d be quite interested in a handset that ranks between the last two and maybe a multimedia monster to top the N97 would take a bit longer. But the rate at which the platform is evolving is quite promising.

For now though, Nokia is wisely focused on fixing the bugs of its new OS and the more affordable handsets (whose shortcomings are more easily forgivable by default) seem the right way to go. The N97 was more of a prestige move and it’s probably not so vastly outnumbered in the side-sliding QWERTY niche to fear a really humiliating defeat.

So a series of smart moves might have bought the Finnish company some time to get used to a world it wasn’t really that well prepared to inhabit in the first place. But it sure takes a greater effort to stay on the path of success, than it does to postpone failure.

Anyway, if McLaren could rise from trailing by over three seconds a lap to a win, why can’t Nokia make something similar? They do need time though to pump up their touchscreen performance against some pretty tough rivals. Let’s take a look at what the other manufacturers have to offer for this kind of money.

The LG KP500 Cookie and the Samsung S5230 Star are the cheapest touchscreen alternatives by the two compatriot makers. The lack of Wi-Fi and smartphone capabilities is partially compensated by the more lively interfaces and the lower price tags but it would be a pretty safe bet that the 5530 will win this one. And that we guess is the one that matters the most – beating the most obvious rivals in the mass segment – and by a good margin too.

LG KP500 Cookie • Samsung S5230 Star

The 3G-enabled Samsung S5600 Preston looks a stronger contender though. Adding GPS and high-speed network data might be enough to make up for the lower-res display and the lack of smartphone capabilities.

Samsung S5600 Preston

The more exotic alternative LG KU990 Viewty is well known for its camera, but the touchscreen experience it delivers, as well as its looks seem well dated now.

LG KU990 Viewty

Finally we come to the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic’s bigger brother – the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. The S60 touch pioneer is equipped with a larger screen and built-in GPS, plus the 3G network data, which are all pretty major upgrades. With the prices of the two pretty close at the moment thanks to some heavy carrier subsidizing, it’s only the compact body and the somewhat better design that speak in favor of the 5530.

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

But all that being said we are still keen to take the bet that once its price settles down in a couple of months, the new XpressMusic touchscreen will be looking forward to match – and perhaps beat – its forerunner’s sales. As it seems, ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner here – a winner by design, and worthy one, we should add.

Source : http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_5530_xpressmusic-review-387p9.php 

Nokia 5530 XpressMusic

This – this is the point at which what Nokia in general (and OPK in particular) have been saying about Symbian OS taking over (from Series 40) in the mid-tier in the phone market comes home to roost. What we have here is a full-touchscreen S60 5th Edition smartphone with Wi-Fi coming in, unlocked, with no phone contract, for £130 including VAT in the UK – quite staggering. To put that into perspective, under the same terms the Nokia N900 is around £500, the N97 is £430, the HTC Touch Pro 2 is £470 and the (unlocked) Apple iPhone 3GS is… well, whatever you’re prepared to pay, up to £700 in many cases. Compare those prices with £130 – you could buy three 5530s for less than a single N97, for example – and then bear the huge differential in mind when reading about some of the compromises and limitations below.

Hardware and styling

And so to the handset. The 5530 XpressMusic is the perfect size for a phone. Not a smartphone necessarily – you’d expect to add some bulk for extra screen real estate or qwerty keyboard – but the perfect size for a phone, something that anybody can incorporate into their lives without having to sacrifice pocket or purse space. And, perhaps, most importantly, something that feels great in the hand. The 5530 even feels quite solid, despite being 100% plastic (as you’d expect), with the only immediate build quality issue being that the device rattles – there’s something inside the camera or main circuitry that’s rattling and I’ve no idea what – which is worrying.

The styling is centred around a ring of chrome-effect plastic and a trendy semi-phosphorescent blue detail that sits just below the fake chrome. The touchscreen area on the 5530’s front is actually around 3.5″, as evidenced by the green/menu/red virtual keys and the XpressMusic hotspot, but the actual display is only 2.9″ (diagonal), obviously something of a cost-cutting decision. The result is that S60 5th Edition’s nHD resolution is somewhat crammed into a space almost identical to that of (for example) the QVGA resolution of the N95 8GB or N96. On the one hand, screen elements are a bit harder to tap on accurately and screen detail is a little harder to see, on the other hand the graphics and text look incredibly crisp and, to be honest, I had few complaints. Contrast outdoors is similar to that on the 5800 – no (relatively) expensive transflective layer here.

The SIM card slot and microSD card slot (4GB is supplied in the box) are covered by the same piece of hinged plastic down the left hand side of the 5530 – it’s not an elegant solution but then, yet again, keeping the cost down was paramount here. There’s a power button on the top, with a row of buttons down the right side: the usual volume up/down (and image zoom in/out where appropriate), keylock toggle (always great to see, I’m totally sold on this quick way of locking/unlocking) and the two-stage camera shutter button.

The only slightly controversial port decision is on the 5530’s bottom edge, where you’ll find both a 2mm charging port and a (covered) microUSB port. Given how new this phone is, I’d really expected to see microUSB charging. There’s also a welcome 3.5mm audio jack and (again controversially) a stylus. Maybe this is relevant to the small size of the 5530’s screen (and thus to the size of interface elements) or maybe this is just to help get the SIM card out – who knows?

The 5530’s back has just the camera aperture, styled as if it had a kickstand – but you just know that it doesn’t. There’s a single (and weak) LED flash and a non-branded 3 megapixel camera, of which more later. The back cover itself is extremely flimsy but in keeping with the build quality throughout the device. The battery is the same as that in the E75, i.e. 1000mAh, which should be more than enough for a phone with this size of screen and target market (i.e. you’re not going to be watching videos or browsing the web for hours).

Inside the 5530 XpressMusic

So several compromises for the sake of price so far – but there are just as many inside the phone as well. The biggest are lack of 3G – so data use is limited to GPRS and EDGE speeds, which will certainly limit Web use for many users – and lack of GPS. This latter is somewhat surprising given Nokia’s Ovi Maps-centric business model these days – you’d have thought that enough people would sign up for navigation to offset the cost of putting in GPS chips in each phone.

In fact, not only is there no GPS, there’s also no copy of Nokia Maps, one of the first smartphones for ages to not feature this. Again, you’d have thought that it was easy enough to include Maps, even if only so that people could use cell tower location and see what was (roughly) around them? I wouldn’t expect Maps to be featured prominently, but figured it should be on the 5530 somewhere.

However, it’s not all bad news: there is Wi-Fi, rather welcome at this price point, and with the absence of 3G, it’s just about the saviour of the device. There are also no significant memory constraints – after the usual startup customisations there’s around 75MB free on disk C: and after booting there’s 57MB of free RAM – which should be enough for anyone.

With the ‘XpressMusic’ part of the name, it’s not surprising that the music side of things is well stocked. There are two loudish speakers, one at either end of the phone (with two narrow grilles each) – we’re not talking Nokia 5800 volume or quality here, but it’s good enough for most people. The supplied stereo headset is a one piece design with in-ear speakers – it’s definitely a budget headset but again good enough considering the handset’s price. There’s Bluetooth A2DP compatibility too, of course.

No surprises on the music software front, though yet again Nokia Internet Radio is conspicuous by its absence (hey, it has only taken Nokia a year to port a simple 3rd Edition app to 5th Edition so far – there’s no hurry….) Still, Podcasting and the Music store are both welcome and complete a competent music phone.

This being 2009, there’s a token attempt at adding social networks to the phone. Hi5, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Amazon and Friendster icons are all prominent, but each only goes to the appropriate mobile web site – no widgets to be seen here, sadly (though the Facebook page at least offers one ‘for the 5800 XpressMusic'(!)) If you want widgets you’ll need to look in the Ovi Store – whose client isn’t built-in – probably because it’s being upgraded often. Instead Ovi Store is the de facto download when you tap on the provided ‘Download!’ icon.

There are no surprises in the main Applications folder either: Boingo will help with Wi-Fi hotspots, Global Race is an average (though sluggish by iPhone standards, of course) racing game and Bounce is the 3D ball rolling game that we’ve seen a hundred times before. Video centre is there ready to play back BBC iPlayer videos – except that the Beeb hasn’t enabled content for the 5530 XpressMusic yet, so there’s little of interest there too.
Interface notes

Straddled in time between the Nokia 5800 and the fully ‘kinetic’ Nokia X6, the 5530 contains some elements from each, confusingly. There’s full kinetic scrolling in lists, e.g. Contacts and Web bookmarks, but the main Applications menu and web pages, for example, are both represented in the ‘old’ way. I’d hope that the last step towards full kinetic/paper-like behaviour would be taken in the first major firmware update, but with Nokia’s track record here it’s hard to be certain. Where kinetic scrolling is implemented, it’s done very well though.

As with almost all S60 phones since the original N95 in early 2007, there’s a built-in accelerometer to provide auto-rotation of the display when needed – as with the 5800 XpressMusic, this rotation works in everything except the homescreen (and games with hard coded bitmap graphics). And yes, auto-rotation can be independently turned off, along with enabling or disabling flipping the phone to silence calls or snooze alarms.

Firmly in the ‘love it or hate it’ camp is the ‘Contacts bar’ homescreen theme. Like the 5800, from a year ago, there’s a strip of your favourite contacts, but here the theme is a lot more refined: the strip is scrollable, so you’re not limited to just four people – and, importantly, the strip coexists with standard notifications and application shortcuts, with your contact details and feeds appearing on a separate (almost full screen) ‘status’ pop-up when tapped on. I like the system and used it a lot on the also new 5730 XpressMusic – it’s just as useable here. Although, in terms of time, scrolling the faces to get to a favourite contact isn’t very efficient, it’s intuitive and fun, reminding yourself of all the people who matter to you – and for that reason it gets my vote.

Camera and video

There’s no Carl Zeiss branding on the 5530’s camera lens, but Nokia tend to pick above average components and I wasn’t surprised to get decent results out of the 5530 in good light conditions. As far as I can tell it’s exactly the same sensor (and aperture) as on the 5800 XpressMusic, but without the Carl Zeiss lens. In otherwise, good photos with decent light, but terrible results after dark, indoors in dim lighting or with flash. Here are some examples, click on each to download or enlarge:

A couple of nice photos on windowsills in good (overcast) light…

Outside on the (aforementioned) overcast day in Autumn in the UK (i.e. not much colour in the garden!); a close up flash photo in near darkness, that single LED flash and the small aperture and sensor make night photos disappointing – but (again) arguably OK for the price point

Video capture is exactly as it was a year ago on the Nokia 5800 – with a default of 640 by 352 pixels at 30 frames per second and the higher VGA resolution if needed. And again, video’s quite decent if the sun’s out and then gets progressively worse as the light dies. For a smartphone of this price, VGA video capture is still welcome though, even at the tail end of 2009.

Source :  http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Nokia_5530_XpressMusic.php