I was given a Nokia 5310 XPressMusic Phone to demo for a few weeks and then review. I had the phone for a good month and even took it to Nashville, Seattle, London, Montana and California. I made calls on it in all places except for London (I don’t have an international calling plan) and in each area the calls were very very clear. In California I used the phone to take pictures and video for the Nokia Productions movie. You can see the fruits of that labor on some of my previous posts.

The phone was supplied by WOM World / Nokia. This is the second phone that they have sent me to test and review. The recently sent me a N3555. That phone was okay but this phone was 10 times better. I even used the 5310 to make a call to England to talk to Colin from WOM World / Nokia“>WOM World / Nokia and the sound was perfect.

The Look of the phone: The 5310 has a candy bar format with a nice bright screen and small keyboard. I was very shocked at how small (4.09in x 1.76in) the phone was and how thin (0.39in) it was. I felt like I might slip it into my pocket and not feel it sliding out. I am used to my large phone that slides into the pocket of my painter’s jeans. I thought if I put the 5310 in that pocket it would slide too deep and be hard to get to. It was. But I did notice that with 5 pocket jeans you can slide this tiny phone into that never used 5th pocket with ease. My phone was black and red and the color scheme was certainly one I enjoyed. I even went and got some headphones that were black and red to match it (I had broken my others on my trip to California so I stopped at Circuit City and picked up some cheap Sony ones for my flight home. They happened to have a black and red pair and I was already partial to that combination because of the phone.)

The Features: For a phone so small it packs tons of features. There is a 2MP camera phone installed that takes images up to 1600 x 1200 pixel resolution. The camera also has a 4x digital zoom and 2.0″ QVGA 240 x 320 pixels, 16.7 million color display. Here are some examples of photos taken with the phone.

Click images to view full size.

The camera also takes digital video as well. It is okay for sending little videos to your friends but it lacked the ability to make the image that large or smooth. The videos came out grainy. Here is a movie where Heather, a woman I met on the Nokia Productions movie shoot, was driving and she squealed the tires around a bend driving up to the Griffith Observatory. She told me after she scared me half to death that she had taken stunt driving courses.

See how grainy the camera was. It is much better when there is not much movement from the subject. For example this one.

Overall the phone’s camera abilities were still lacking.

The Music: The main reason that you should have in buying this phone is for the music features. First off it has a full on headphone jack, not that puny jack where you have to get special headphones, nope a full jack. I think that is one of the things that made the biggest impression on me. I hate those tiny headphone jacks. My personal phone has a small jack and I hate that. If Nokia can find a way to include a full jack port on this tiny phone then there is no reason that other manufacturers shouldn’t follow suit. That being said just toss out the headphones that come with the phone, they have that one side shorter than the other thing that is very annoying. Just get any other pair and you’ll be fine.

Even if I didn’t have headphones I could still listen to my music through the great speakers on the phone. I say great because the sound really was awesome and the volume could be pumped way up. The phone has crystal clear sound, enabled with a dedicated audio chip and you can tell, it makes a difference. I was also able to control the music with the three dedicated buttons for play, rewind, and forward. The phone can play many different media formats to like Play MP3, MP4, AAC, eAAc+, and WMA music files. I was able to load up a ton of songs too because of the 4MB micro SD card that came with the Nokia 5310 test phone. I’m not sure if that is standard, but it certainly is an accessory.

The Software: You can download software from the Nokia website called Nokia PC Suite. With this software you can transfer music, images and videos to and from the phone. You can also update your contact list, offload messages, back up and synchronize your phone and PC. I found this software very easy to install and to use.

Overall: In the end is this the phone for me? No, it doesn’t have everything I want. I still need to have a phone with a full on Qwerty keyboard, a better resolution camera and video option and something with a little more heft. I did love the music aspect and if I was into any form of exercise this phone would be perfect to take along on a jog or in-line skating or to the gym. Couple the phone with the Nokia bluetooth headphones and an armband carrier and you are ready to go. The battery power was excellent, so you are gonna konk out well before your music does.

Again, this review was done after I had a month to play with the phone and test everything I could. I was not paid for this and even had to pay to use the phone myself, I bought minutes and a sim card. You can learn more about Nokia Phones from WOM World / Nokia. Also if you are using a Nokia phone already you might want to participate in an experimental program called NokiaProductions.com. This is a movie that is being made with videos and other media created on Nokia Phones. take a look at some of the videos that are there already, there is some pretty interesting stuff. I was even able to go work on the film in LA. Check out my work on Jumpcut.