In between powerful smartphones and the most basic handsets lie those devices dedicated to doing one thing, usually media, photo's or messaging, and doing it very well. Nokia's Xpressmusic range of mobiles, like the Walkman range of phones from Sony Ericsson, is aimed at users needing for a mobile phone that can function well as both a phone and a portable media player.
The Nokia 5530 XpressMusic is one of the cheaper phones in Nokia's Xpressmusic lineup, in many ways acting as a cut down version of the 5800 Xpressmusic, Nokia's flagship musicphone. It features a smaller 2.9 inch touchscreen and has a thinner and more curved styling than the 5800, while keeping the same overall no-frills shape.
Like the rest of its Xpressmusic siblings, the Nokia 5530 runs the 5th edition of the Symbian S60 operating system, which has been improved for better touchscreen control. The 5530 still comes with a stylus, but you will feel the need to use it a lot less often than in previous revisions of the OS. Despite the lower price, the Nokia 5530 includes enough hardware bells and whistles to encroach into smartphone territory, with a 3.15 Megapixel camera, Wi-Fi connectivity, an MP3 player, Bluetooth and a microSD slot.
The 5530 XpressMusic's resistive touchscreen works both with the included stylus and finger-control, and supports both a full-screen QWERTY keyboard and handwriting recognition. The 5530 also comes with Nokia's Ovi application suite and users can download and install the Ovi Store software enabling access to thousands of downloadable games and applications.
The Nokia 5530 XpressMusic also comes with the Nokia Music Store software and supports mp3 audio and mp4 video, although the maximum resolution of supported video files is quite low. Sound quality on the 5530 XpressMusic is good, and the built-in stereo speakers produce a high enough volume for when you don't want to use headphones. The Nokia 5530 XpressMusic also includes GPS and runs Google Maps very nicely.
As a portable media player, the Nokia 5530 is somewhat limited by the small screen size, although this isn't a problem when playing music. The media player software is solid, if no competition for Apples iTunes, and it's easy to scroll through lists of albums and songs without having to resort to the stylus. As a phone, however, the Nokia 5530 does look a little overpriced compared to the full touchscreen alternatives from competitors like Samsung and LG, with the styling of the 5530 looking particularly out of date compared to the better Samsung handsets.
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