Nokia 5230 Nuron – free premium access to Ovi Maps
Thumbs Up:
Excellent call quality; 3G support; free voice guided navigation and maps via Ovi Maps; budget friendly price tag; first smartphone with Ovi Store by a U.S. carrier.
Thumbs Down:
Clunky user interface; resistive touch screen; no flash for camera; missing document viewer and Wi-Fi.
Inside the Trunk:
Technology: WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM
Band: Quad-band of WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM 850/900/1800/1900
Phone Design: Candy Bar
Caller ID: Yes
Other Features: Bluetooth, 2-megapixel camera, Ovi Store, free access to Ovi Maps
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
Nokia 5230 Nuron has 70MB internal memory and micro-SD expansion slot that accepts up to 16GB. The operating system is Symbian OS 9.4 60 Series v5.0. Supported wireless interface is Bluetooth 2.0.
3.2 inches resistive touch screen LCD display has 640×360 pixels resolution that supports 24-bit (16.7 million) colors. 2-megapixel camera has CMOS optical sensor and features 3x digital zoom. Special effects are Black & White, Negative, Normal, Vivid, and Sepia. The video recorder resolution options are QVGA 320×240, QCIF 176×144, and VGA 640×480.
The additional features are voice command, voice dialing, Class 32 EDGE, Class 32 GPRS, USB, GPS, Category-6, HSDPA, 64 polyphonic ring-tones, Java applications, Web browser, HSCSD, touch-screen, Bluetooth and Speakerphone. The messaging features are SMS, MMS, and support for POP3/IMAP4/SMTP. The Nuron phone supports JAVA MIDP 2.0 platform.
Supported digital audio formats are eAAC+, AAC, WMA and MP3. Nokia 5230 Nuron supports WMV, MPEG4, and 3GP video formats. Its 1320mAh lithium ion battery has a life of 420 minutes talk time and 458 hours of idle standby time. Accessories included inside the box are user manual, plectrum stylus, wired stereo headset, 4GB micro-SD card, USB cable, and power adapter.
Razzle Dazzle:
Nokia 5230 Nuron is 2.03-inch wide, 4.37-inch tall and 0.61-inch deep and weighs 3.98 ounces. It is a bit heavier than the Xpress Music 5800. Its silver-and-white chassis gives a refreshing look and the battery cover has slick finish.
Inside Dope:
Nokia 5230 Nuron with T-Mobile will become a great deal when it is available for $69.99 with two-year service agreement from March 24. The Nuron smartphone has a full touch-screen display on its front face and features 3G support, Ovi Store, free maps as well as free voice guided turn-by-turn directions. What’s more – you will also get the premium content like Lonely Planet Guides and weather forecasts plus maps for Mexico, Canada, and the U.S. without any monthly subscription. It has similar design like that of Nokia’s Navigation Edition and Nokia 5800 Xpress Music. However, you will miss some great smartphone features like high-end camera, excellent performance and Wi-Fi on this low price tag. If you have a limited budget to buy a smartphone, then we will recommend you to go for – Nokia 5230 Nuron.
You will find power button, power connector, 3.5mm headphone jack, micro-USB port are on the top of Nokia 5230 Nuron. Both micro-SD and SIM card slots are located on the right spine and are protected by their respective covers. The camera activation/capture key, lock button, and volume rocker sits on the right side. Navigation array is located underneath the display and consists of main menu, Talk key, and End button.
3.2 inches touch-screen LCD display has 640×360 pixels resolution that supports 16-million colors. The display is clear and bright, but looks washed out in direct sunlight. We appreciate Nokia to maximize the screen size to phone’s dimensions. The display features proximity sensor as well as inbuilt accelerometer to rotate the display on tilting the phone. However, the screen transition is not smooth and takes slight lag.
Like that of HTC Tattoo, the touch-screen is resistive instead of being capacitive. On the contrary, it is quick responsive and you can navigate through menus quickly without any problem. You have to double tap in the Web browser for zoom in or out. We will prefer to have capacitive touch-screen and multi-touch feature that removes the need of stylus. The Nuron runs on older Symbian S60 5th Edition platform. It is important to mention here that Nokia has announced to release Symbian 3 OS after few months that features single-tap feature.
Nokia 5230 Nuron is the first smartphone with preloaded Ovi Store from a U.S. carrier. You can browse the store to download paid and free applications, games, themes, video, audio, and more. We are disappointed to know that the Nokia Music Store is currently not available in the U.S.
The major feature of the Nuron is Ovi Maps application that provides numerous advantages over Google Maps. It enables to view maps even without a data connection. For this, you have to download the maps in Nokia 5230 Nuron to use them offline. Nokia has included hybrid mapping technology that redraws the map quickly and performs zoom in/out without any noticeable delay. What’s more – the Ovi Maps are available in 46 languages and 74 countries. You will get nine self-explanatory options on launching Ovi Maps – Lonely Planet, Events, Weather, Walk, Drive, Favorites, Share Location, Find Places, and My Position. You can start with any option and does not have to exit or switch for doing a different work.
The map view options are terrain, satellite, 2D or 3D. Ovi Maps also has 3D landmarks with good reference point. You can customize the settings like frequency of traffic updates, points-of-interests (POIs) categories, and route preferences. You will get turn by turn as well as text-to-speech voice directions. It is important that all these GPS and map features are free and you do not have to go for a monthly subscription.
Nokia 5230 Nuron store contacts limited to available memory and SIM card can hold additional 250 contacts. Each contact can save multiple numbers, email addresses, birthday, home address, work address, and more. You can organize the contacts into groups and can also pair them with custom ring-tone, group ID and photo for caller ID. The calling feature set includes vibrate mode, voice dialing, conference calling, speed dial, speakerphone, quad-band GSM, and world roaming.
The other applications are Web browser with Flash Lite 3.0, alarm clock, voice recorder, calculator, notepad, file manager, calendar, and more. We do not like that there is no document viewer and you have to download QuickOffice 6 Mobile Suite separately from Ovi Store for $9.99. The messaging features are text and multimedia messaging, instant messengers, support for POP3/IMAP4/SMTP, and Mail for Exchange 2008 for corporate Exchange. The pre-installed instant messengers are MySpace, Google Talk, Yahoo!, Windows Live and AIM. Nokia 5230 Nuron does not have inbuilt Wi-Fi.
The inbuilt music and video player supports WMV9, MPEG4-AVC, MPEG4-SP, WMA, eAA+, AAC, MP4, MP3, and so forth. The music player features FM radio, play-list creation/editing, pod-cast support, inbuilt equalizer, and album art.
2-megapixel camera of Nokia 5230 Nuron is a step down from 3-megapixel of the Xpress Music 5800. It features editing options for color effect, white balance, etc. and 3x digital zoom, but does not have flash. It can record videos of 640×480 pixels resolution at 30fps. The overall captured image quality was average. The colors appeared washed out and images looked little hazy. On the contrary, the recorded video quality was good.
We made few calls through quad-band based Nokia 5230 Nuron via T-Mobile for testing. The overall call quality was perfect and we did not face any dropped calls. We received loud and clear sound at our end without any voice distortion or background hiss. The callers received good and excellent sound at their end, but they could tell we were calling via cell phone. The speakerphone call quality was good. Both of us received loud volume, but the callers could tell we were speaking from some distance. We did not get any problem while pairing Bluetooth headsets with the Nuron phone.
We loaded some Web sites on the phone’s browser for testing. It loaded Microsoft Web site in 10 seconds, whereas the GSMcellulars.com took 12 seconds to load. The browser was a little clunkier to use and we had to do some steps for switching to a new Web page. The YouTube videos only buffered prior to playback and after that played without any problem. We received nice sound quality music on both speakers and included wired headset.
The GPS of Nokia 5230 Nuron was quick to find our location. Moreover, the map redraws quickly and zoomed in without any delay. The voice guided instructions are understandable and clear. The route calculations were quick, accurate and swift while testing. However, we missed the voice entry system of Google Maps. Noteworthy – you have to sign up for Ovi account to use Web portal for entering favorite routes and destinations and then have to sync them with phone.
Nokia 5230 Nuron performed average in or tests. It is good to manage daily basic tasks. The Nuron performed sluggish on opening multiple applications. However, we did not face any system reboot or crash while testing.
1320mAH lithium ion battery has a life of 7 hours talk time in GSM and 4.3 hours in 3G. The idle standby time is 18 days in GSM and 19 days in 3G. The digital SAR is 1.16 watts per kg as per FCC radiation tests.
Nitty Gritty:
The Nuron provides free access to premium service of Ovi Maps, but lacks camera flash, document viewer and Wi-Fi. If you have a limited budget and need a phone with free access to Ovi Maps and can overcome above drawbacks, then you can go for new – Nokia 5230 Nuron.
