The Nokia 5230 is one of Nokia’s XpressMusic range and is big and bright, with excellent music features and decent phone functionality as well.

Brightly coloured edges with a matching central navigational button set in a glossy black case characterise this trendy Nokia handset. The 5230 trimmings come in a range of colours including fiery red and electric blue. The handset also features dedicated MP3 player control keys on the side, a great aspect that helps you make the most of the multimedia functions. The keypad has been designed to be N-Gage game compatible and so some of the number keys are separate while others are joined. Gaming on the 5230 is therefore great fun, and although the keypad does take a little bit to get used to for standard phone controlling, it looks really cool. 

Another element of the 5230 that is really cool is, of course, the music functionality. Being a part of the Nokia XpressMusic family, the 5230 has dedicated music control buttons that allow you to launch, skip, play and pause a music player. It also boasts a new ‘Say and Play’ button which is located above the screen. If you want to hear your favourite tune, simply press this button and say the song name or artist. Great in theory, this feature is a bit unreliable, but can lead to you rediscovering some gems in your music collection (that you didn’t ask for).

A Symbian 9.3 OS with Series 60 3rd Edition user interface makes the 5230 lightning fast, easy to use and an excellent multitasking tool. The in-built web browser is quality and the 2 inch display makes for colourful and crisp viewing. The Nokia 5230 also comes with a microSD memory card slot, and Nokia have thrown in a 1GB memory card in the service package to get you started on your storage.

Other features include a 2-megapixel camera with a dual LED flash and a solid set of PIM functions. The musical nature of the Nokia 5230 is sealed with a 3.5mm headphone jack and the inclusion of a good quality external speaker.