Nokia 5230 Quad-band GSM Cell Phone – Unlocked Reviews
date : July 10th, 2011Nokia
Review : 3 Reviews
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List Price : $ 199.00
Price Now : $ 239.99
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Tags : 5230, Cell, Nokia, Phone, Quadband, Reviews, Unlocked
- Unlocked quad-band GSM cell phone compatible with 850/900/1800/1900 frequencies and US/International 3G compatibility via 850/900/1900/2100 UMTS/HSDPA plus GPRS/EDGE capabilities
- Fun, stylish, and affordable 3G-enabled touchscreen with 3.2-inch display; download apps, games and music from Nokia’s Ovi Store
- 2-megapixel camera/camcorder; Bluetooth stereo music; microSD memory expansion to 16 GB; access to personal/work e-mail and instant messaging services
- Up to 4.5 hours of 3G talk time (7 hours on non-3G), up to 438 hours (18.25 days) of standby time
- What’s in the Box: handset, rechargeable battery, charger, wired stereo headset, wrist strap, car mount and holder, user manual
Nokia 5230 unlocked Phone – Nokia 5230 Key Product Features One hand, resistive touch with Nokia’s intuitive UI Dimensions 111 mmx51.7mm (thickest part 14.5mm), 115 g with/BL-5J battery Memory: Internal 81 MB with hot swappable 4 G microSD in box. Can handle up to 16 GB Talk time: Up to 4.5 hr (3G) /10.7hr (2G) Standby time: Up to 458 h (3G)/452 h (2G) Up to 4.6 hr video playback Mpeg4, up to 3 hr nHD, up to 33 h music playback (offline mode) 3.2 nHD, 640×360, 16 M colors; 16:9 aspect ratio 2.0
List Price: $ 199.00
Price:
Great Phone for Pre-Paid Users!,
After I dropped my wife’s phone into a lake, it was time to get a new phone. Her phone was a prepaid T-Mobile, so we looked around for a decent replacement. Costco had this phone for sale for prepaid use at a very reasonable price, far less than above.
The good:
Free maps from Ovi Maps. Free navigation can be had by downloading maps and voice and telling the navigation program to work offline. Our phone came pre loaded with the entire US, which takes about 2 gig of the 4 gig card which was included.
Free access to the Ovi App store. We have been downloading some free apps and so far, no charges against our minutes… knock on wood.
Small size but very high resolution. It’s about the length of an iPhone, but only about 3/4 as wide. The screen is 3.2″ but has a resolution of 360 x 640 pixels. It only has a 2mp camera, but that’s plenty to shoot great video.
Bluetooth is fully functional. You can transfer files using it, unlike some other phones that only allow earpiece or speakerphone use through BT.
It comes with a 4 gig card, but with maps and pictures and music and whatever else, I can see it filling fast. It can take up to a 16 gig card.
The so so…
It comes with a little “guitar pic” thing to use the pressure sensitive touch screen. You can use your fingers too, but sometimes the things you wish to click are too small for fingers, so the pic is the better choice. Time will tell whether the touch screen is durable.
No wifi. Wifi would have been nice, but I guess this is what you give up at this price. Oh well.
As a phone…
Calls are clear and no issues with call quality. It has a proximity sensor so you don’t accidentally press buttons when you hold it against your face. Dialing or texting by feel cannot be done since there is no physical number pad, it’s totally touchscreen. Dialing is easy though, I have not “fat fingered” a button yet.
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|Good value for money,
When I first got this phone, I had no experience with smartphones whatsoever, and neither did I feel the need for it. I was very pulled back by their high prices, and not so convinced by their extra capabilities, which is why I ended up with this phone in the first place. It looked like a good compromise between a budget cell phone and a fancier smartphone. And a good compromise at that.
After more than a year I can’t but confirm my first impression. Everything is there that you’d want to have in a regular cell phone, plus:
* OVI Maps: it’s almost like having Google maps, just without having to pay for the internet connection, which if you don’t have a suitable data plan may be useful (Problem may not exist in north America but other countries are sadly not so up to date..). You just need to turn off the Assisted-GPS in order to be able to use the service free of charge. Unfolding a 3foot wide map on a crowded sidewalk may have some retro allure to it, but it just doesn’t compare when it comes down to ease of use.
* Youtube + Internet browser + mail client: which are actually three separate applications. If you haven’t yet experienced internet on your cell phone, you may feel like you don’t need it, as I did. But once you give it a try you won’t be able to deny its usefulness. Be it to be reachable by mail without having to give your cell phone number to everyone, or show your friends a video on youtube which is just not so funny when you describe it with your own words, or just to kill some time when you’re bored. Believe me, it’s like pringles, once you pop you can’t stop. Having 3G makes everything all the more enjoyable.
* 2MP camera: it works fine, at least in good light conditions. At night picture quality drops significantly. Given the price range though, I don’t believe one is entitled to ask for more, particularly considering that 10MP digital cameras are available for really low prices nowadays. Same goes for videos
* MP3 and music: Can’t say anything about it, as I use an iPod for that
* Ovi store: the place where you’ll find all nokia sponsored applications and themes to personalize your phone. You can find a lot of things from pdf readers to games or iPhone style useless apps. Bad news is that you’ll have to pay for most of them, themes included, but then you can’t pretend to have everything for free.
Battery life is really good when using it as a normal cell phone (3+ days), and drops as expected when using 3G (even under 2 days in case of heavier use).
A couple of drawbacks now: for all the stuff discussed above, the phones memory is ridiculously small. Thing which can partially be overcome with the SD card. Still from time to time, you’ll find yourself having to empty the cache while brosing.
Major drawback is that the phone is not powerful enough to run the above mentioned apps. This I noticed after I got used to it, and had the chance to use higher end smartphones. At the beginning it wasn’t a problem at all, and I hardly even noticed the extra couple of seconds it took to load heavy web pages, but as soon as you embrace everything this phone has to offer you’ll soon find yourself struggling with its hardware limits. These affect internet browsing the most, but also have an effect on scrolling and menu navigation: the phone will occasionally lag, much more rarely freeze. I had the chance to try both the branded (Vodafone) and unbranded versions, and the problem is much more noticeable with the branded version. Apparently Vodafone’s done a crappy job at modifying nokia’s software.
TO SUM UP:
The real issue with this nokia, is that once you start exploiting the phone’s capabilities you’ll want more, and you’ll start considering spending 500 bucks for a high end phone.
If you’re not sure whether you are interested in what smartphones have to offer, this phone is a good way to find out in an economically painless way. If you’ll end up using it to phone and send sms as you always did you’ll find yourself with a regular cell phone with a fancy touchscreen and a nice camera to go with it.
But if you do get sucked into the smartphone world, prepare to change your phone after a relatively short time.
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|Excellent Unlocked Phone For Price,
This phone over all comes in at about a B-. The phone itself is great, excellent reception, sound and call quality. The interface isn’t bad. People who cut down Symbian typically never gave it a chance, or used it. It is a FINE interface for just about everything you would need to do. It doesn’t look as cool as the newer DROID or iPhone GUI, however look at the price compared to them, and you don’t have to sell your soul to AT&T or T-Mo. Battery is OK. Email support is better than before. OVI Maps is really good for navigation, not so good for finding points of interest. I would recommend Google Maps as a back up for finding Points of Interest, getting that address, then putting them into OVI Maps and use it’s navigation.
PROs
Cheap Unlocked Phone (For use with AT&T’s 3/3.5G network)
Free Navigation
Decent Email
Sound Quality/Call Quality
No Contract Needed
Comes with some pre-loaded Apps
CONs
Symbian OS can take a little time to learn – it is NOT difficult – it is LOGICAL
Battery could be better for a 1320mah Battery
Small Data Cable
OVI Store – Getting Better All The Time
OVI Maps iffy for POI’s
Not the fastest phone/GUI out – but ample – even for a heavy user
NO Wifi – But for it being so cheap you can’t complain
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