The Nokia 5530 XpressMusic was the second touchscreen-only Symbian phone to come from Nokia. Building after the popular success of the 5800 XpressMusic, it brings a bit less features (no GPS, no 3G), making it smaller and more affordable than the 5800. For those of you who were scared by the chunkiness or lack of style in the 5800’s design, the 5530 XpressMusic is a great alternative to consider.
The 5530 XpressMusic features a simple design, with plastic materials, and a nice metallic rim around the top edge of the touchscreen. Beneath it is a colored rim, here it’s in turquoise blue because our unit is the white one. The bottom of the phone houses the microUSB plug, 3.5mm headset plug, and charging pin. The right side of the phone has the volume keys, the keylock switch, and the camera shutter button, whereas the left side (not shown) has the microSDHC and SIM card door. The top of the phone only has the power button.
The metallic rim is almost flush with the rest of the touchscreen, and the simple design is further accentuated by the use of touch keys for the Menu, Call and End Call keys. A stylus is included with the 5530 XpressMusic because it uses a resistive display which requires a push to work, and the stylus can be removed from the lower back left side.
The back of the 5530 XpressMusic is made of a huge battery cover, in plastic, engraved with the Nokia logo, and a few dotted blue patterns to follow the color theme of the phone. It also house the 3.2MP camera, non Carl-Zeiss unfortunately, and with one Dual-LED.
The 5530 XpressMusic’s homescreen shows a ton of information, starting by the date and time, operator, profile. It lets you set up to 20 favorite Contacts that you can scroll through, and 4 favorite Applications. There’s also options to show your Email, Calendar and To-Do notes, as well as current playing Music on it. If you click on a Contact, you’re presented with your latest communication with them.
There’s a small video demonstration included on the 5530 XpressMusic, that you can play from the Gallery menu, and that explains a bit more the options included in the phone. Here are a few shots of it.
Being a touchscreen XpressMusic phone, the 5530 also has the Multimedia menu touch key on the top right, just above the touchscreen. Tap it, and you have the options to quickly access the Music Player, Gallery, Share Online, Video Player, and Web Browser.
The 5530 XpressMusic comes with the BL-4U battery, a 1200mAh battery, that can last through 1-2 days of average usage, with some Music playing, Wifi browsing, calls, messages and such.
Nokia 5530 XpressMusic – Seeing in Double
And just because one 5530 XpressMusic isn’t enough, here are a few shots of two 5530 XpressMusic devices side by side, only for the sake of bragging that we had two of them at the same time.
Nokia 5530 XpressMusic And Accessories
The 5530 XpressMusic comes bundled with a nice set of WH-205 in-ear headphones, that unfortunately don’t have music control buttons, but come with 3 different ear-size tips.
