Introduction
They made a promise and kept it. What can we say – nice phone this Nokia 5250, but not an N8. Yeah we know, we need to be respectful and professional. But it’s easy to be a jerk to a 100-euro smartphone.
The Symbian-powered Nokia 5250 is bottom of the smartphone barrel. The low price suggests the feature set is going to be pretty spartan. Which doesn’t mean it’ll fight in the shade. It’s rather going to get into brawls with some pretty basic dumbphones.
Nokia 5250 official photos
The question here is who’s ready to sacrifice most of the features that make a smartphone, to save a few bucks. Alright some of Nokia’s touchscreen smartphones have been going around for peanuts but the 5250 is the lowest bidder by far. Some of the value-adding options don’t cost that much any more. But the Nokia 5250 encourages exactly the opposite kind of thinking. No budget is too tight and no feature is too important.
Key features
Main disadvantages
Being affordable is a big plus for a product and a short but focused spec sheet can be an advantage as well. After all, some people get confused by too many features while others just don’t need them. And they might be glad to have the 5250 around. So, the Nokia 5250 is the right phone for the right person. As indeed every other phone out there is designed to be.
There is no Wi-Fi, even 3G is missing from the specs sheet. And you won’t find an inbuilt GPS receiver either. But the bare minimum is covered. You still get quad-band GSM support and stereo Bluetooth and a decent 2.8 touchscreen.
Nokia 5250 live shots
The 2 megapixel snapper lacks autofocus, LED flash or geotagging but it can at least shoot VGA videos. There is a great music player, an FM radio with RDS and a reasonably stocked app market.
Now, let’s see what’s inside that tiny retail box. And then we’ll take a look at the phone’s build and finish.
Messaging has everything
The Nokia 5250 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 Nokia 5250 message editor
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 5250. 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 straight away.
Multiple email accounts and various security protocols are supported, so you can bet almost any mail service will run trouble-free on your Nokia 5250.
Checking email
Here might just be the right time to mention the input options on Nokia 5250. 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 on-screen text input options: numpad, QWERTY keyboard and handwriting recognition
Finally, the Nokia 5250 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.
Sluggish image gallery
The gallery of Nokia 5250 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.
Browsing images on the Nokia 5250
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.
You can also zoom in the photos 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.
The transition from portrait to landscape is automatic
The gallery’s problem is speed. Loading a picture takes a couple of seconds even for small images. If you have a large number of photos it might take ages before the thumbnails are generated. Zooming and panning are not that much faster either. On the other hand, kinetic scrolling has been vastly improved. The real nuisance though is that photos in a folder require a double tap to display – one to select, another to open.
Music player stays the same
The Nokia 5250 music player is pretty functional but its design could use a little freshening up – it hasn't changed since we first saw it in the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. With user friendliness such a key aspect of full touch phones, it would be nice from Nokia to add some fun to the mix.
Your music library is automatically sorted by artist, album, genre and or composer and searching tracks by gradual typing is available. You can also create your own playlists in no time.
The music player does the job but could use a new skin
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. With the huge number of supported formats you will hardly ever come across an audio file that the phone can’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’re still not enough you can set new ones up in a matter of seconds.
Creating a new equalizer preset is easy
Quite naturally, the player can also be minimized to play in background. However, if you haven’t set the Music Player to appear on the standby screen, you will have no way to control it. Your only option would be to go back to the full music player app using the Task manager.
Basic video player
To begin with, a 2.8-inch screen is hardly the best thing to watch videos on. The lack of DivX and XviD codec support on the Nokia 5250 doesn’t help either.
Of course, you can use the Ovi PC Suite 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-pixelated but so far it's the easiest way of getting compatible video content to your handset.
The video player is somewhat of a disappointment
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, 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.
FM radio with RDS
The FM radio on Nokia 5250 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're on the go, the 5250 should take care of staying tuned to your selected radio station.
We have no grudges with the FM radio
Pretty good audio quality
The audio output of the Nokia 5250 is quite good, the handset passing our traditional test with flying colors. It won't amaze you with loudness, but, considering the clean output both with and without headphones,we are willing to let that go.
It doesn't matter if you are using headphones or if you have pluged the 5250 in an active amplifier - the frequency response is great with deviations only detectable in lab conditions. The same holds true for the noise level and the dynamic range as well as the total harmonic distortion. Intermodulation distortion and stereo crosstalk increase when headphones come into play, but they still remain perfectly tolerable.
Poor 2 megapixel camera
Nokia 5250 has a 2 MP camera for a maximum image resolution of 1600x1200 pixels. There’s no auto focus or LED flash. Hardly the photography enthusiast’s dream, is it? Well, its performance isn’t anything to write home about either.
The camera UI can be quite confusing with all settings squeezed in a shared menu, which is no match for what some other manufacturers offer on their full-touch handsets.
The camera UI
On the positive side, the range of settings on the Nokia 5250 is extensive enough: from manual white balance and ISO to exposure compensation, sharpness and contrast. Various effects are also at hand, labeled color tones and there is also geo-tagging.
The viewfinder doesn't take 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 and an on-screen shutter key. With the lack of auto focus you might as well use that last one just as successfully as the regular shutter key.
No great expectations about the image quality turned out to be the right way to approach the Nokia 5250. The amount of resolved detail is pretty low and the contrast of the photos is a mixed bag. And with the noise also pretty high you get the idea that you better use the Nokia 5250 camera for taking contact pics only.
VGA videos
Video recording is definitely the better part of the Nokia 5250 imaging skills. The phone can shoot VGA at 30fps. Quite good, considering the 2 MP still shots. The relatively high compression results in lots of artifacts, but you still might consider the videos as ok, especially for an entry-level smartphone.
The camcorder UI
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.
Capable web browser hobbled by EDGE
The S60 web browser is decently usable, especially now that is also offers kinetic scrolling. There is still quite a lot of work to do before it is able to rival the best in class. The Android and iPhone browsers are miles ahead in terms of user-friendliness.
The Nokia 5250 browser has very good page rendering and boasts some nice features such as different font sizes (5 options), auto filling of web forms and a password manager.
The S60 web browser still needs some polishing
The built-in RSS reader will handle your feeds, while the download manager keeps things in order. There's also a popup blocker, but no open-in-a-new-window option.
A minimap is available for finding your way around elaborate pages and the Find on page feature is welcome. The visual history is a nice bonus that can help you easily find a page you've visited.
And now we get to Flash support. Yes, there is Flash support and it’s way better that it was back on the X6. The YouTube videos we’ve tested did well with almost no dropped frames, but the loading time was excruciating. Unfortunately the small screen and resolution won’t allow you to fit the whole YouTube screen in there. But we don’t think you’ll go watching Flash videos over an EDGE connection anyway. The mobile version of YouTube is an option.
Watching YouTube videos
Another upgrade over the X6 web browser is the better kinetic scrolling. It now works fine and manages to catch up with most of its competitors.
Double tapping on a block of text zooms it in on screen, but again, the zooming routine treats the whole page as an image and the browser doesn't refit the paragraph text to fill the screen properly (the so-called text-reflow). As a result, when you zoom in you still need to scroll sideways to read it.
Final words
The Nokia 5250 is a phone that expects to impress with nothing but its cheap price. It’s hard to think of it as a smartphone really – there’s so much missing from the package. It’s a Symbian set though and Symbian is the place to go if you’re looking for a budget smartphone.
The Nokia 5250 takes austerity seriously and thinks and acts small. Keeping a low profile did work marvelously for Nokia in their first attempts at touchscreen. The pioneer 5800 XpressMusic had its flaws but the competitive price made it a bestseller.
Later on, there were even cheaper phones to succeed it and there were compromises involved all along. It’s always been a matter of choice: Wi-Fi or GPS, 5530 or 5230. Now, the Nokia 5250 doesn’t even give you a choice. It’s the most basic of smartphones, stripped to the bone.
And Nokia clearly didn’t think they had removed enough hardware, so they got to work on the software too. You won’t get any Office application or widget-rich homescreen, not even a voice recorder. It’s an entry-level smartphone and they didn’t want to leave any doubt about that.
And the Nokia 5250 sure is cheap but you get to wonder if it’s cheap enough. It’s up against some of its own siblings and quite a number of dumbphones – some of which have obviously better specs.
Let’s get the Nokia phones out of the equation first, For nearly the same amount of cash (yes, the 5230 is clearly overpriced right now) you can get the Nokia 5230. Its specs are the same, except it has a bigger screen, integrated GPS and comes with Ovi Maps free turn-by-turn navigation. Makes little sense really – unless of course these are phones that will never compete on the same markets.
Nokia 5230
Further up the ladder – but not too far – we find another Symbian sibling. The Nokia 5530 has Wi-Fi connectivity, a 3.2 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash and a slightly bigger screen.
Nokia 5530 XpressMusic
An attractive candybar option – especially if you’re not keen on a touchscreen – is the Sony Ericsson Elm. It has an excellent 5 megapixel camera, 3G, Wi-Fi and GPS connectivity. It’s not a smartphone, we know, but for some it may not be a big deal.
Sony Ericsson Elm
If you are into the Android, the LG GT540 Optimus just got upgraded to Android v2.1 Eclair. It will give you a bigger screen, a better camera and a full-connectivity package including Wi-Fi and GPS. The Optimus costs about 30 euro more than the Nokia 5250 (overpriced as it is now).
LG GT540 Optimus
The Nokia 5250 is a true smartphone, but with its limited feature set, it would hardly make a difference. Its smartphone potential is obviously limited. It's Nokia's way of bringing touch phones to the mass market before a wave of S40 touch phones floods the lower market ranks.
And while it being a smartphone may not be so great, it certainly doesn't hurt. Besides, with the Nokia 5250 you can count on some great build quality, nice audio reproduction and a really loud loudspeaker. And as with most Nokia smartphones, it's going to enjoy proper software support as well. Just wait until the stick it a with a price tag that matches better its feature set.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Nokia 5250 review: Back to basics
8:33 AM
Raj
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