Nokia 5510
There are now so many mobile handsets on the market a phone has to stand out in some way to be any sort of success in the marketplace.
This can be achieved by enhanced Web browsing features, a large colour screen, an attached camera and so on. Or, it can just take a fairly normal phone and give it a weird cover, which is what Nokia has done with the 5510
That's not to say there's anything wrong with that. Some of the best products produced are those that take tried and tested technology and give it a little tweak to be more useful to consumers. To be honest, we quite liked the 5510 for a number of reasons.
As already indicated, the biggest distinguishing feature of the Nokia 5510 is the layout of the handset, which includes a complete QWERTY keyboard. It's laid out pretty much like a normal keyboard, with the mobile screen in the middle. Below the screen is a set of menu navigation buttons: clear, select and up and down arrows.
| Ring
Ring: Introduction Benefon Track Pro Ericsson T60C Ericsson T68i Motorola V.70 Nokia 3510 Nokia 5210 Nokia 5510 Nokia 9210i Philips Fisio 820 Samsung SGH-T100 |
There are four buttons on the side, two volume buttons and a hot button each for the radio and music player. There are also various holes for connectivity, including a plug for the computer and another one for connecting to a stereo system.
The 5510 takes its music pretty seriously. Nokia seem to think the kind of people who do a lot of SMSing are also the kind of people who spend a lot of time listening to music and can easily work out how to transfer it between devices. Judging from published demographics of SMS usage, they're probably right.
The first thing you notice when playing music on the 5510 are the earphones, which plug into two different holes in the phone, so each earpiece has its own connection. This allows for some pretty serious stereophonic action. You can also select a sound style from nine choices such as Rock, Classical, Latin, and the perennial favourite: Extra Bass.
The phone has a built in radio with 10 preset stations, which can be altered, of course. From our experience the radio works very well, with clear sound and good volume. Nokia cite the radio time as up to 13.5 hours, if no other functions are being used.
Music can be transferred to the phone with the aid of a USB connecting cable and a CD of software that gets installed onto the computer. We found the interface for the Nokia Audio Manager to be unintuitive, with several lists that we couldn't work out the functions for, and songs were transferred to the phone more by luck than anything else.
The program probably becomes simpler with use, and is worth the effort required to fill the 64Mb of memory the 5510 has set aside for music. Nokia says the phone holds almost two hours of near CD-quality music, we calculate the space to hold about 18-20 songs, which isn't bad at all.
As well as transferring the music across from your computer, the phone also allows you to record directly from the FM radio in the phone, which is pretty cool. The instruction manual has a couple of warnings about the possibility of music being copyrighted and the illegality of copying music tracks for the purpose of selling or distributing them. Unlike Sony, however, Nokia doesn't have a vested interest the music business, so they don't put too many obstacles in your way...
Apart from the "Music" function, the menu for the 5510 is the normal Nokia menu. The phone has WAP connectivity, and some animated screen savers which are fun, but the distinguishing features are the QWERTY keyboard and the music functions.
Nokia 5510
Company: Nokia
Price: AU$549
Distributor: Nokia
Phone: 1300 366 733
6%
1%
I have read mainly positive reviews and comments about the V70. I decided to buy one. What was I thinking?
The phone is a disaster, if it were not for its looks, I would never have bought it.
For an expensive phone, the features are shocking!The phone book is hard to use, the key's on the keypad have become almost unuseable (from only 6 months of use), the screen is hard to see and the 2 or three lines of text is just not enough.
The games, well, can you actually call those applications games? And I have found that no ringtone download sites will download to a V70. There are no web pages which show you the notes to put in your phone, for a V70. 30 spaces for your own ringtones wasted!
The V70 is no where near loud enough as it should be. Even on the maximum ring volume setting, I and everyone around me cannot hear it ringing if we are in a medium density area, such as a mall. And the vibrating alert just makes a sound, you can barely feel it vibrating when it is in your pocket.
The last awful feature I have found since I started using the phone 6 months ago, is that that stylish rotator, blocks the antenna. My phone is constantly dropping calls, people I am calling sound robotic, as do I they tell me. All because the rotator sits in front of the antenna!
Better luck with the new V70i Motorola!