Nokia 5610 XpressMusic Review
Phone rating: 
In a nutshell: This is one of the best all-round music phones available. It has everything we want: a great music player, an FM radio, a 3.2 megapixel camera, 3G, a memory expandable to 4 Gbytes, and great ease-of-use. We score it 9 out of 10.
Available in a choice of red or blue, the Nokia 5610 XpressMusic is a slide design music phone that upgrades the popular 5300 XpressMusic phone. The 5610 looks like a slim version of the 5300 with a high gloss black finish, but in fact it's a much more powerful device in lots of ways.
The problem with the 5300 was that the screen broke quite easily. Nokia seem to have fixed this by adding scratch protection and aluminium side panels. So, even though the 5610 looks quite plasticky (and does show fingerprints), it seems to be quite a robust phone. It's not superslim, but is a nice size and fits very comfortably in the hand. The display is a real treat: not only is it capable of displaying 16.7 million colours, but it's large (2.2 inches) and high-resolution (240x320 pixels). It sits above a special music slider key that is used to switch control mode (music player, radio or phone). This is a great idea, and makes the 5610 very easy to control without having too many buttons to press. Below the slider key is a good size navigation pad, that once again is easy to use. The slide opens smoothly with a spring mechanism to reveal a functional keypad with reasonable sized keys. Overall the 5610 does seem to be a really nice product to use, and beats most of Sony Ericsson's Walkman range for ease-of-use.
Let's consider the music playing features next, as this is an XpressMusic phone after all. We think that Nokia's latest range of XpressMusic phones can definitely match Sony Ericsson's Walkman range. The 5610 doesn't disappoint us: it plays all the main formats of music with full Digital Rights Management support; it has good quality sound from the built-in loudspeaker, or even better from the stereo headset included in the sales package; it supports Bluetooth stereo headsets; it has an equaliser and supports playlists and album art; and it can take a microSD memory card up to 4 Gbytes. That's most boxes ticked. You can also plug in your own headphones via a 3.5mm socket adapter. We would have liked to see more than 20 Mbytes of internal memory, but that's our only complaint. As well as the music player, an FM radio is included with support for RDS and Visual Radio, so you can easily find out information about what you're listening to.
The camera on the 5610 is surprisingly good. It has 3.2 megapixels, autofocus, smooth digital zoom, macro mode and a dual LED flash. It may not beat the Nokia N95 but it walks all over the Walkman range! Did we mention that this is a 3G phone? There's a second camera for making video calls too.
The 5610 does everything else that we'd expect from a 3G music phone too. You can set your own music as ringtones; you can record and send audio messages; you can use email with attachments, you can surf the web at 3G speeds using the Opera Mini web browser, you can play games, and you can connect via Bluetooth 2.0 or USB 2.0. Battery life is good, and it's a quadband phone as well as 3G. It's worth noting too that the phone uses Nokia's latest dedicated audio chip for enhanced sound.
Unusually for us, we can't find anything that we don't like about the 5610. In fact in many ways it's a lovely phone to use. So why only 4 stars? Simply because of the price: Nokia have positioned the phone in the over-£200 price bracket, and when you pay that kind of money you expect some kind of wow! factor. The 5610 doesn't have one, but it's a fantastic all-rounder and we really do recommend it.
Features of the Nokia 5610 XpressMusic include:
- 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus, 8 smooth digital zoom, macro (for close-up shots) and dual LED flash
- Secondary camera for video calling
- Display: 16.7 million colours, 240 x 320 pixels (2.2 inches)
- Music player (MP3, MP4, AAC, eAAc+, WMA music files, OMA DRM 2.0 and Windows Media DRM) with equaliser and support for playlists and album art
- FM RDS radio with Visual Radio
- Built-in loudspeaker
- Voice recorder
- Voice controls
- Ringtones: Video ringtones, MP3 and MP4 tones, eAAC+ tones, AAC tones, WMA tones, 64-voice polyphonic MIDI, message alert tones, and alarm clock tones
- Messaging: SMS, MMS, Nokia Xpress audio messaging, email (SMTP, POP3 and IMAP 4) with support for attachments
- Games: City Bloxx, Music Guess, Rally 3D, Snake II plus downloadable Java games
- Graphics: full screen colour wallpapers, animated colour screensavers, icons, themes and logos
- Personal organiser functions
- Internet: WAP 2.0, GPRS, HSCSD, EDGE, 3G data connection, Opera Mini web browser
- Connectivity: Bluetooth 2.0, USB 2.0
- Memory: 20 Mbytes plus microSD memory slot up (expandable to 4 Gbytes)
- Flight mode
- Quadband (GSM 850/900/1800/1900) plus 3G (WCDMA 850/2100)
- Size: 99 x 49 x 17 mm
- Weight: 111g
- Talktime: 6 hours
- Battery standby: up to 320 hours
