The Nokia 5610 is a step up in camera from the 5310 but a step down in design. What is the point of the slider on this phone? None in my opinion. It certainly did not enhance my enjoyment of this phone. I guess the slider was in place so that the screen could be bigger. A big screen is okay for the web surfing and the other things but it really isn’t needed for things like the camera or the music player.

The Look

The 5610 is a small chocolate bar shape with a slider feature. By holding the phone in your palm and pushing gently with your thumb the phone slides back to reveal the number pad. This does, in essence allow for a larger screen. However, it felt gimmicky and made me feel like the keypad was a little cramped. Why not make the phone slide sideways and reveal a qwerty keyboard instead. Texting is the big thing. Make a phone that makes it easy to text.

The phone I got was a metallic red and black just like the 5310 that I tried out. But the 5610 doesn’t look as good. It is more boxy where the 5310 was fun with it’s slim size and dedicated music keys. There are no dedicated music keys on this phone. Actually there is the play/pause button on the face and the volume buttons on the side. They just didn’t look as cool as the 5310.

The Camera

The camera is a 3.2MP camera. This is a step up from the 2.0MP camera from the 5310. But it is still not good enough in my eyes. It takes too long to focus and if anyone moves the pictures get totally blurry. I took a bunch of photos and posted them on Flickr.

What I did like was the macro feature. It worked very, very well when I was in the exact right spot for it to work well. Here is an example of the macro. You can even make out the fabric lines.

The Video Camera

Video is pretty standard and not that great, it ranged from really bad to tolerable. Here is a tolerable video. You can see the bad ones on Flickr.

Using the Phone

Using the phone was easy, it is a pretty simple phone. Everything is where it should be, the sound is good and clear. Getting the sim card in and out is weird but I dealt with it. Overall not a bad phone. Not a great phone but pretty nice if you are into music. Did I mention that the Music XPress option is really nice and there is even an FM tuner.

I want to thank the folks at WOM World / Nokia for everything these past few month. I’m going to be participating ina a very special event that they are having with the Nokia 6650 phones.