Nokia 5250 deals & review

In a Word or Two

The Nokia 5250 is a touchscreen phone offering a great range of music and social media features at an affordable price. The 5250 follows in the footsteps of the highly popular Nokia 5230 and has a lot of that phones appeal while offering much more into the mix.

Design

In terms of looks the 5250 does not really stand out from Nokia´s range of touchscreen phones, opting for a tried and tested design. The 2.8" screen in use on the 5250 is small by comparison of the many higher end touchscreen displays on the market. The screen does not occupy the whole of the front face of the phone like many touchscreen handsets, and has a relatively large border around it. It also operates on resistive technology rather than the more popular capacitive type. Having said this, the display is pretty sharp and colourful with 16 million colours available and a resolution of 360 x 640.

Music and Entertainment

Although being a music oriented phone the 5250 only comes with a mere 512MB storage space included. As any music lover will know this is not exactly a desirable amount of room to store all your favourite tunes. However the 5250 does support the use of microSD cards and can support 16GB microSD cards, providing ample space for a large amount of music. The added bonus is that these cards can be swapped around providing a virtually endless amount of storage space.

You can add your own music to the 5250 from your computer via the USB connection, or you can download new music from the Ovi Store. There is much more content that can be downloaded from the Ovi Store as well, including touchscreen games. There are a number of such games included with the phone, including the highly popular Guitar Hero 5.

Web, Camera and Connectivity

The 5250´s web browser supports Java and Adobe FlashLite, and will automatically optimise web content for use on the phone. Online entertainment is enhanced by the support for video streaming including YouTube, and there is also fast access to Facebook, MySpace and many other social networks.

The 5250 comes with a 2 megapixel camera with support for QVGA video recording at 30fps. Images captured with the camera can be stored on Ovi Share, or uploaded to online services like Flickr.

Despite offering a great range of entertainment and messaging features at a great price, the lack of 3G and Wi-Fi is sorely felt. The phone does support GPRS and EDGE but these are not the most desirable forms of getting online that are available today. The phone is quad band GSM, meaning that it can be used in virtually any country in the world.

Verdict

There are a lot of great features on board the 5250 and for its price it does offer great value for money. The phone is let down by its lack of Wi-Fi and 3G which is somewhat detrimental to many of the other great features that this phone has to offer. The phone is ideal for people on a budget who want to be part of the touchscreen craze and at the same time it has much to offer in the realm of entertainment.