Nokia 5700

5700 Nokia picture This XpressMusic handset from Nokia stands out from the crowd thanks to a twisty section at the bottom that rotates through 180 degrees to switch between a standard keypad and one with dedicated music-playback buttons. As it runs Nokia's Series 60 operating system, the 5700 also boasts some impressive smartphone features. It's available for around 275 SIM-free online. The phone comes in three different color versions including Red, Gray and Black but with all of them the rotating part and the top part are finished in very nice looking lacquered white plastic. It looks very durable and blends well with all the different color versions of the rubber sides and the plastic battery cover. In terms of size Nokia 5700 is a little bit above the average. It is bigger than common phones (108 x 50 x 17 mm), but not as heavy as you would've guessed from the numbers. It weighs exactly 115 grams. Right above it, on the top of the phone, is the On/Off key - it's made of the same white plastic as the surrounding surface, fully flat and blending perfectly. In terms of functionality there is almost no change. It is responsible for switching the phone on and off, changing profiles, locking the keypad or the phone, and activating offline mode. Nokia 5700 Themes Free Nokia Themes download Nokia 5700 Software Free Nokia Software download Nokia 5700 Games Free Nokia Games download The left side of the device features two volume keys as well as a speaker grill right at its top. Depending on the swivel position, either the second speaker grill or the camera and the LED flash are found in the lower end of the left side. The volume keys are tiny knobs in the rubber part of Nokia 5700. The phone runs Nokia's Series 60 smartphone software, so you get some cool extras, such as the RealPlayer applet for watching videos and a neat Web browser. This takes full advantage of the phone's 3G download speeds and renders pages neatly on the excellent 320x240-pixel colour screen. The heart of Nokia 5700 is its Symbian 9.2 OS. It uses the well known S60 3rd edition graphic user interface. Beside, Nokia has improved it by adding Feature Pack 1, which we first experienced in the high-class N95. Nokia 5700 has 38MB of internal memory, expandable through the already mentioned microSD card. Luckily, the retail package of the 5700 will be including a memory card of quite ample size (1GB in our case). The handset uses Nokia's standard Series 60 music player, which can be very sluggish to respond to commands. When you press the play/pause button it sometimes takes a second or more to carry out the command. Often you think the button hasn't been recognised so you hit it again, only for it to pause playback and then suddenly start again. It's similarly slow to respond to the track skip buttons. After a while you find yourself longing for the speedy music player found on Sony Ericsson's Walkman handsets. Although the rotating keypad is one of the phone's key selling points, it's actually rather clunky to use. This is because there's a significant lag between rotating the keypad and the handset launching the application that's meant to be selected. This handset pumps out great-sounding music, has good smartphone features and an excellent screen. The whole experience is marred by the sluggish music controls and the iffy camera, however. If we were after a music phone, we'd pick one from Sony's Ericsson's Walkman range instead -- the slim 3G W880i or the W950i, with 4GB of onboard memory, are good alternatives.

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