Nokia 5250 XpressMusic Phone vs The Rest

Nokia 5250 is supposedly to replace the entry level touchscreen Nokia 5233 which sports a bigger touchscreen (3.2-inch). Squeezing the screen size down to 2.8-inch, the Nokia 5250 XpressMusic is still meant to be an entry-level touchscreen, music-centric phone that comes with a more stylish design than the old Nokia 5233. However, looking at the market now, let's see how it would fare against other budget touchscreen phones like the Samsung Monte/Corby and LG Cookie series.

Design: It's a good thing that Nokia came up with something different this time from the earlier 5000 series of XpressMusic design which becomes a bit boring already. It may not look the best in the market among the budget touchscreen phones, but with a design that is a bit similar to Sony Ericsson Xperia mini, the Nokia 5250 looks totally different from the previous 5000 series phones.

Screen: The Nokia 5250's TFT resistive touchscreen is nothing groundbreaking and we've seen more finger-friendly capacitive touchscreen on phones like Samsung Corby -- not the best with what other phones in this price range are offering. The 2.8-inch screen size sporting a 320x640 pixels is an impressive pack of resolutions while phones like Samsung Corby and LG Cookie Plus offered lesser pixel packed resolution screen like 240x320 and 240x400 respectively. In terms of screen resolution, the Nokia 5250 stands out and it even beats the more expensive model like Samsung Monte which sports only 240x400 pixels. However, the Nokia 5250's downsized screen from 3.2-inch to 2.8-inch and the stylus-oriented resistive screen are nothing to shout about.

OS and Interface: The Symbian^1 (essentially iSymbian OS with S60 5th edition) is not too exciting, however it definitely gives more options for third party apps and functionalities than the Samsung Corby or LG Cookie range of phone users. The Nokia 5250 phone's Symbian OS will run its own (.sis) apps plus Java apps. One more advantage the Nokia 5250 has over the other touchscreen phones in this price range is Nokia Ovi Store. Ovi Store is more matured and has many more useful apps than what Samsung and LG offered. So, in terms of apps and OS, the Nokia 5250 has more advantage than its competitors; however, the interface design is something that we left to the users to decide.

Camera: The 2MP camera on the Nokia 5250 is just another fixed-focus 2MP camera and it also does not have flash of any kind. Although, we did not expect any premium features from this music oriented phone. It wouldn't be too hard to pack a few features like auto-focus and LED flash to make the phone more interesting. Looking at what other phones offer like the Samsung Corby or LG Cookie Plus/Pep/Fresh, it may not be the highest pixel count you can find in this price range, but it is in par with the competition. Video recording at QVGA resolution at 30fps is also in line with what competitors offer. In short, imaging is not the Nokia 5250's forte.

Multimedia Playback : As in any Symbian OS phones, the Nokia 5250 also plays all popular formats (MP3/AAC/WMA etc), and users can install apps to play more audio/video formats. It also comes with FM radio. These features are not something other touchscreen phones do not offer however, the most attractive feature here is the Ovi Music which comes bundled with the device and it offers unlimited music download from Ovi Music (in select territories). This feature puts the Nokia 5250 ahead of other touchscreen multimedia phones in this price range.

Memory: The Nokia 5250 comes with 51MB of internal memory which is expandable via the microSD slot on the device. Up to 16GB of micorSD memory card is supported. Nothing too exciting here, but we wished Nokia bundled at least 8GB of microSD card to make it more attractive than the competitors.

Connectivity: This is what most standard touchscreen phones lack and the Nokia 5250 like the older 5233 is no different. There is no GPS, no Wi-Fi and no 3G. All you have is Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP support and a standard EDGE connectivity. None of these connectivity options are present on LG Cookie range of phones (Fresh/Pep/Plus) either. For the Samsung Corby range of phones, there's at least a 3G variant which makes it more appealing if you plan to use your phone for social networking or going online. The Nokia 5250 has a universal microUSB port for PC data transfer and there is a 3.5mm headphones jack.

Price: The quoted price on Nokia blog of 115 Euro makes the Nokia 5250 a good deal around its estimated price of Rs. 7,000. Mostly for its new look, Ovi Music download and OS, the Nokia 5250 can be a good value-for-money touchscreen music phone.

Further reading...

Nokia 5250 XpressMusic Phone Revealed

Top 5 Phones Below Rs. 10,000