NOKIA N81

Introduction

The XpressMusic lineup is fired up and coming after you with all they've got - from QWERTY smartphones to touchscreens. In fact, with the arrival of 5530 XpressMusic, the Nokia music line has more touch phones than the Nseries. We told you, they're dead serious about it.

With the 5800 XpressMusic shaping up as quite a blockbuster, Nokia had hardly any choice but to build on that momentum. The way up from the 5800 goes into Nseries territory really, so a lower spec'd device with an even sweeter price tag seems quite the right thing to do to reach the masses. And well, strategically expand the user base for the Touch UI edition of Symbian S60.

The Nokia 5800 offered value-for-money that very few could match. The 5530 comes in even more affordable but tries to deliver as much goodies as possible, pushing the value-for-money meter well towards the "must have" end of the scale. Here's what the 5530 XpressMusic offers and what was left out to keep the cost down:

Key features:

• 2.9" 16M-color TFT LCD 16:9 touchscreen display (360 x 640 pixels)
• Symbian S60 5th edition
• ARM 11 434 MHz CPU, 128MB RAM memory
• 3.2 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash and VGA@30fps video
• Quad-band GSM support
• Wi-Fi connectivity
• microSD card memory expansion, ships with a 4GB card
• FM radio with RDS
• Bluetooth with A2DP and USB v2.0
• Standard 3.5mm audio jack
• Stereo speakers
• Stylus, with its own compartment inside the phone
• Proximity sensor for screen auto turn-off
• Accelerometer sensor for automatic UI rotation, motion-based gaming and turn-to-mute
• Office document viewer
• OVI integration (direct image and video uploads, OVI Contacts)
• Landscape on-screen virtual QWERTY keyboard
• Excellent audio quality
• Price tag on the cheap side
• Nice battery life

Main disadvantages:

• No 3G support
• No built-in GPS receiver
• Display has poor sunlight legibility
• Default font size is a bit small due to the smaller screen
• Somewhat limited 3rd party software availability
• Average camera image quality
• Video recording quality is unimpressive
• Doesn't charge off its microUSB port
• No smart dialing
• No DivX/XviD video support out of the box
• No TV-out functionality