Nokia 5610 XpressMusic - White (T-Mobile)

Calls and speakerphone: The Nokia 5610 performed very well during calls. We consistently maintained a strong signal, and callers sounded loud and clear. Callers reported clear conversations on their end, as well. The speakerphone was also impressive in both volume and clarity, despite the fact that the speaker sits on the back of the device.

Audio playback: As you’d expect from a music phone, audio quality is superb when using a set of headphones (the supplied earbuds are pretty good, too). Music played through the external speaker is better than we’ve experienced on other cell phones. Obviously, you won’t get room-filling audio or the kind of bass response that you will with headphones, but for listening to a few tunes while sitting at your desk, it does the trick. Since the cell phone supports stereo Bluetooth (A2DP), you can also listen to music via stereo Bluetooth headphones.

Menu/phone book: The Nokia 5610’s menu structure is straightforward, providing graphical icons for contacts, instant messaging and e-mail services, call records, and settings. The phone book holds up to 2,000 contacts, each of which can contain up to five phone numbers, an e-mail address, URL, street address, and other information. The SIM card can store an additional 250 contacts. The Nokia 5610 cell phone also has good e-mail support. From the IM & E-mail menu option, you can quickly add a variety of e-mail accounts, including AOL, Yahoo Mail, Comcast, and Gmail with your username and password. Just be sure to get the right data or messaging plan to use the functionality without breaking the bank.

Camera/video: The Nokia 5610 includes a 3.2-megapixel camera. We found image quality is above average for a camera phone with rich colors and sharp focus. The autofocus and flash both work exceptionally well, and the camera comes with a wealth of settings, including three color effects, a landscape mode, a self-timer, and a sequence mode. You also get an 8X zoom, but the image resolution reduces as the zoom level rises. At maximum zoom, the camera only shoots at 160 x 120 pixels, so don’t expect the best images at this setting.

The camcorder lets you choose from three quality levels and four resolutions (up to 640 x 480). In the default setting, you can shoot up to 30 second clips, or you can also set the Nokia 5610 to shoot as long as memory will allow.

Music: As you’d expect, the Nokia 5610’s music capabilities are impressive. You can store tracks on the cell phone’s internal memory, which has 20MB of storage (so about 4 or 5 songs, if you’re not storing much else in the ways of pictures or applications), or to the included 1GB microSD card (you’ll be able to store 24 albums of music on a card of this size). If you need more room for tunes, this cell phone will support up to a 4GB MicroSD card, The Nokia 5610 cell phone can act as an external storage device, so you can drag and drop tracks from Windows Explorer to the cell phone’s music folder. Or, if you prefer, you can set up the cell phone for music sync and move tracks from within your PC jukebox application, such as Windows Media Player or WinAmp.

From the main screen, you get quick access to the music player by moving the music slider once to the left. Moving the slider to the right opens the FM radio, which stores up to 20 preset stations (Note: In order to listen to the radio, you’ll need to attach the included headset to act as an antenna). The only thing missing is the ability to record from the radio, but that’s a minor quibble. The music player includes five EQ presets, as well as two user-definable settings from the five-band EQ. The player supports MP3, MP4, AAC, AAC+, and WMA (including DRM-protected WMA files – so you can play WMA music files you bought from an online music store). Other features include album art, five color skins, and stereo widening to create a surround sound-like effect. When you receive a call, music automatically pauses, then resumes when you end the call.

Connectivity/Bluetooth: The Nokia 5610 includes a USB data cable for syncing music tracks, photos, and video clips from your cell phone to your computer. We had no problem pairing a Plantronics 610 Discovery headset to the device, and we were able to beam contacts back and forth with a Samsung SPH-A640.

Look and feel: The Nokia 5610 is a slider phone, like its predecessor the Nokia XpressMusic 5300 and the slide mechanism is firm but comfortable. We like the music slider bar just below the screen for accessing the music player and FM radio. The slide also doubles as a thumb brace for opening and closing the slider cover.

On the downside, we found the center five-way toggle button, which also acts as the play/pause control for music and video playback, to be a bit tricky. The button is large but stiff, so pressing it square in the middle to make a selection wasn’t always easy. Instead, we often found ourselves pressing the button more to the left or right. Around the navigation key are two soft keys and the talk and end/power keys. The volume rocker on the right spine sits too flush against the case for easy use—we really had to dig our fingers in to adjust the volume instead of pressing easily. The camera button sits on the bottom of the right spine. The top of the unit houses the power jack, headphone jack, and a microUSB jack, and the camera lens and speaker rest on the back. The left spine is completely empty. The 2.2-inch screen is bright and displays vibrant colors.

Unfortunately, the Nokia 5610 requires you to remove the battery to access the microSD slot. And although there’s a battery-release button on top of the device, removing the cover can be tricky, and the cover itself feels as if it could easily snap when you try to replace it, but it never did actually snap in half.

Keypad:

We were impressed with the Nokia 5610’s battery. With occasional phone calls, e-mail access, and music playback, we went a full week before having to recharge the battery. Three continuous hours of music playback barely made a dent in a full battery charge. If you make lots of calls throughout the day, you’ll probably need to recharge the cell phone every few days.