Nokia 5700 XpressMusic

Nokia's XpressMusic range is young. I looked at the slider 5300 XpressMusic back in February. Before that I examined Nokia's 3250, also an XpressMusic handset, this time with a swivelling numberpad. And now I have the 3G, Quad-band 5700 XpressMusic - a sort of hybrid of those two mobiles that has the slider 5300's looks and the 3250's swivelling lower section.

The main selling point of this mobile is its music and video capability and that is where the swivelling comes into play. The number pad section twists through 180 degrees allowing you to have either the 1 to 9 keys or a set of music and video control buttons facing front. With the number pad facing front the 5700 XpressMusic seems fairly unremarkable. The handset sports an ordinary looking S60 home screen, with Active Standby applications waiting for you to select them.


You can digit-dial calls as you would on any other phone. There are two softkey buttons, Call and End buttons and in their centre a miniature joystick for moving about. I never find mini joysticks to be entirely comfortable to use, but this implementation is a perfectly acceptable example of its type.

The phone comes in two main colour schemes (although a khaki green version is mentioned too). In each case there is a fair amount of white plastic involved, with a band of colour flashing alongside the screen on the front of the casing and forming much of the back cover. This band houses two further buttons towards the phone's outer edges. On the left is the Nokia menu key, on the right the Clear key.

Everything except the number pad remains facing front when you do the twisty thing and bring to the front a pad containing two enormous forward and back buttons and a central play/pause button. Do this and the S60 music player automatically runs and you can choose a playlist, song, artist, album, genre or composer.


The pause/play button has a camera icon emblazoned on it, and this is what you use to snap photos or shoot movies. In this mode the forward and back buttons activate the camera zoom. The camera software automatically runs when you swivel the keypad section through 90 degrees.

This swivel section also houses the lens and flash for the built-in 2 megapixel camera on one of its sides. You can face the lens either towards you or away from you, the camera software inverting the image on the fly so that it is the right way up on the phone's 2.2 inch, 320 x 240 pixel, 16 million colour screen.

Nokia 5700 Xpress Music phone, Nokia Bluetooth BH-501 headset review!

VOICE over internet protocol telephony has helped thousands of people shave money from their fixed-line phone bills since appearing on the scene some four years ago. Now it's poised to do the same to mobiles.

The Nokia 5700 Xpress Music phone utilizes a twisting base design that lets you access the music player, camera, and regular numeric keypad just by twisting the lower portion. What’s great is that when this is done, the corresponding application will launch based upon what the phone thinks you want to do. Obviously, when you turn the base to the music keys side, it knows you want to play some tunes. The same thing goes for the camera — it knows that you want to take a flick. Running on the ever-so-popular Symbian S60 OS, any previous Nokia user will be able to pick this thing up and get going. As a true music phone at heart, the Nokia 5700 Xpress Music phone offers some of the loudest darn speakers I’ve heard on a mobile phone.

Like, really really loud. Pretty clear too. It supports WM DRM and even sports a dedicated audio chip to make sure you don’t miss a beat, literally. Another very nice aspect is that the music will fade down when receiving a call, and fade back in when the call has ended, from right where you left off. Go Nokia! In addition to the music playback, using the speakerphone function when on a voice call left us real impressed…it was incredible. Nokia is generous enough to include a pair of stereo headsets with the phone. If accessible, we recommend taking advantage of the built in 3.5mm headset jack and using a pair of your own favorite headphones incase the free ones just don’t cut it.

Call quality is just what you would expect from Nokia, which offers some of the best RF performance-driven phones out there. The actual layout of the keys and buttons on the phone needs a little getting used to, but we found it very easy to use after a short amount of time. Also, the music keys could have been a little more responsive by offering more tactile feedback, but it didn’t affect our ability to pause, play, and skip through music without a hitch. The joystick used for navigating the device wasn’t tedious, but we feel that it could have been a bit better. Packed with a two megapixel camera, you’re able to twist, turn, snap, and send pictures off really quickly. We would have loved to see Flickr integration here like with the N-series, though. We know, we know, N-series only. Overall, the camera quality is good, yet a software update might be helpful in fixing some of the inconsistencies in the various photos we took. You’ll find full A2DP Bluetooth support inside, and that brings us to the second part of the review: the Nokia Bluetooth BH-501 headset.

The unit we reviewed was white and grey, and in our opinion, a little less appealing than the black version of the same headset. Colors aside, the headset performed pretty well when given music duties. Music came in crystal clear, and even though bass reproduction wasn’t outstanding, it was passable to say the least. One great thing about the headset is that it uses the same standard Nokia chargers that most of their current phones do (i.e. the Nokia 5700).

On the contrary, we found the headset is a little uncomfortable to wear, and we looked a little weird when walking down downtown Manhattan (yes we got the "WTF" stares…). Then again, the sole purposes of a stereo Bluetooth headset are to listen to music as well as make and receive calls. There were no complaints from our test victims regarding voice quality when using the Bluetooth headset.

Actual specs for the handset:

• Quad-band GSM/EDGE with WCDMA 2100MHz band or quad-band GSM/EDGE
• 2 mega pixel camera
• Bluetooth 2.0 with DUN, A2DP HFP, HSP, FTP, OPP, SAP, AVRC, BIP, BPPversion 2.0 + EDR profiles
• Talk time: 3.5 hours
• Standby time: 288 hours
• Size: 4.26" x 1.99" x 0.68" wide
• Weight: 4.06 ounces

Actual specs for the headset:

• Talk time: 11 hours
• Standby time: Up to 150 hours
• Supports A2DP and AVRCP Bluetooth profiles
• Battery: 260mAh Li-Polymer
• Size: 5.55" x 4.52" x 1.96"
• Weight: 2.39 ounces

What’s included in the box:

Nokia 5700 Xpress Music phone: phone, charger, battery, MicroSD card, stereo headset, USB data cable, user’s manual.

Nokia BluetoothBH-501 headset: headset, charger, user’s manual

We’re liking the handset and headset overall. The Nokia 5700 takes a little getting used to and we wish some of the buttons were a little more responsive, but we wouldn’t be doing a disservice recommending this phone to a music lover. Let’s give them 3 and a half BGs individually.