The Nokia 5300 XpressMusic Mobile Phone offers excellent performance and a great MP3 player for a reasonable price. This phone is definitely marketed with the audiophile in mind, and the music player is where the 5300 truly excels. Dedicated buttons line the side of the phone (underneath a rubber exterior) and are easily pressed for scanning or for playback. Song information, album titles, and artist names are clearly displayed, and files can be listened to on shuffle. And if you're on an airplane, you can shut down the phone while keeping the MP3 player live. Meanwhile, the sound delivered is of excellent quality, whether you're using the stereo speakers or a stereo Bluetooth headset. Unfortunately, all of your songs must be stored on the expandable memory, as there is only 5MB of internal memory. A 1GB Micro SD card is included.

On the side of the Nokia 5300 is also a dedicated button for the 1.3-megapixel camera. Pictures are taken with the phone held horizontally, making for better-composed shots but, unfortunately, there is no flash. However, the camera takes decent pictures that can be zoomed 8x and sent via Bluetooth, the mini USB, or the high-speed EDGE network.

Aside from the MP3 player, it is the camera's LCD that truly shines. Capable of displaying 262K colors, the screen is very vibrant and extremely easy to read in all light conditions. The LCD itself is 320x240 pixels (two inches diagonally) and, as usual, Nokia's software is extremely intuitive and navigation of the menus is a snap. Meanwhile, the dial pad is revealed when you slide open the casing. The buttons are slightly raised, making it easy to dial without looking.

The address book can hold 1000 contacts that can be assigned distinctive ringers (vibrating, polyphonic, or one of your MP3s). Call quality is exceptional for both outgoing and incoming sound, and the Li-ion battery delivers about 3 hours of talk time and up to nine days of standby before recharging in required. Overall this is very strong phone with an excellent MP3 player. For someone looking for versatility, this is a great buy.


Pros: MP3 player, great LCD, EDGE network, good call clarity, camera, easy to navigate
Cons: small internal memory, no camera flash

Warranty
1 year