Mobile phones have reached new heights of versatility and capability in the last few years, each zenith quickly overturned by yet another advancement that brings their potential to a new level. Where once mobile phones were bulky, cumbersome and oversized chunks of plastic that merely made and received calls, they quickly found themselves getting more and more streamlined and more and more multifaceted as time went on. Text messaging was one of the first and foremost new features, accompanied and followed by ever-improving ringtone quality, then integrated cameras and multimedia players and now smartphone functionality that can run mini-applications.
Nokia is one mobile manufacturer that has tried to stay abreast of all these shifting trends and styles while providing mobile units that are solid at the core. This has earned them a reputation of making user-friendly and dependable mobile phone models that are sometimes slow to take advantage of new trends – it took them a while to catch up to the touch screen crowd – but manage to do new things fairly well than they do. However, while the new Nokia 5130 XPressMusic is emblematic of Nokia’s usual efforts, it is not without notable shortcomings that keep it from being fully recommendable.
The 5130 is one of the newer XpressMusic releases from Nokia, who has made pretty good phones in that subline before in the 5330 and 5800 models. With a slim design made catchy by a good blend of sharp, vibrant red and glossy black plastic panels, the 5130 looks the part and makes an attempt to be as much of a rock-star as its brethren but ultimately falls short due to problematic quality and craftsmanship and lackluster display and playback specs – hamstring it right out of the starting gate and make it feel like a knockoff of a Nokia unit as opposed to the latest in Nokia’s strong-selling lineup.
Indeed, due largely to an attempt to keep final cost down, the quality of the plastic used on the housing shell doesn’t hold up to Nokia’s usual sturdy frames, and goes right against the typically sharp color scheme. The 2-inch display is set at an awkward viewing angle, reducing visibility and readability from anything but straight-on viewing. Another corner cut is the lack of 3G hardware, causing very slow Internet access – although thankfully this may not be one of the primary uses for people looking to get an inexpensive music phone anyway. That last line of thinking may have been the one that Nokia chose to follow, resulting in a phone that isn’t overcrowded with expensive and excessive extras.
Indeed, what the 5130 does come with are fairly streamlined versions of most integrated features on phones – a 2MP camera with no flash or autofocus that manages to record blur-free and colorful images, and a potential extra in the Sneaker Speaker, a shoe-shaped speaker add-on available through select retail channels. However, even this extra doesn’t deliver a whole lot of worthwhile listening, and doesn’t do much to balance out the low quality of the actual earpiece speaker, which also falls quite short of the Nokia standard.
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