GSM Arena

Nokia 5130 XpressMusic

Rickety rock'n'roll

Nokia has done a good job of keeping the rock'n'roll look in previous XpressMusic releases. The combinations of glossy black plastics with vibrant electric reds and blues have always given us rock-star-like confidence when we tugged an XpressMusic handset out of our pockets. The 5130 shares the colour scheme of the XpressMusic range, though it feels significantly cheaper in its build than any Nokia we've reviewed in a long time. The stiff plastic chassis looks ready to smash against a tiled floor, and the various mechanical keys around the edges of the handset sit loosely in their sockets, making a disconcerting rattling when the phone is shaken.

While the overall aesthetic of the 5130 works nicely, the handset's 2-inch display is a disappointment. Unlike more refined mobiles, the TFT panel sits recessed behind the glass by what looks like several millimetres. The effect of this is a significant softening of the colours we see, and a poor viewing angle (meaning the screen loses visibility when viewed at angles other than directly straight on).

It's not all bad news for lovers of budget Nokia handsets and music, the 5130 comes fitted with a 3.5mm headphone socket and a microSD card conveniently located alongside the volume controls, and even more conveniently stuffed with a 1GB microSD card. On the opposite side of the phone you find dedicated music control; play, skip and rewind.

Features

A music player and mobile phone for AU$140 is pretty good value, and in a way it's a good thing Nokia doesn't try to overcrowd this XpressMusic phone with expensive extras that might otherwise go unused. Notably missing is 3G networking hardware, meaning the 5130 will access the internet at painfully slow speeds, but those interested in picking up a cheap Nokia really have to ask how much internet they'd like to be viewing via their phone. We would have liked to have seen lightweight social media apps though, something simple for Facebook and Twitter on the move.

At its budget level price, it's no surprise to see a 2-megapixel camera featured on the 5130 instead of a higher resolution model. Even though this is a low-resolution lens and it doesn't have a flash or auto-focus, we have been impressed with the result during our review. The camera fires quickly, eliminating lots of handheld blurring, and the colours tend towards over-saturation making for bright, colourful photos.

Sneaker Speaker

If you pick up the 5130 through Boost Mobile in Australia you will also become the lucky owner of the tremendously daggy Sneaker Speaker. This music-blasting accessory looks like a high-top basketball boot for a toddler with a speaker stuffed inside. It comes from audio company Sound Surgeon, which is a company suspiciously without a website and those responsible for the closed-cup headphones Boost sold with the Nokia 5300.

The Sneaker Speaker: it sounds as good as it looks. 
(Credit: CBSi)

Would you be surprised if we told you that a speaker shaped like a shoe produces a terrible sound? Probably not. We weren't terribly surprised by the complete absence of bass, the shallow mid- and high-frequencies or the way the sound distorted when we turned the volume up. What did surprise us was how crumby the shoe looks, the company could have at least made a believable sneaker replica, even if the speaker element is only suitable for listening to audio books.

Performance

Unfortunately, the Sneaker Speaker isn't the only part of this sales package with poor audio quality. Making a phone call with the 5130 is made harder than it should be by an uncharacteristically poor earpiece speaker for a Nokia phone. Ordinarily this is the one area you can rely on with Nokia handsets, but the speaker here produces a muffled sounding call compared with calls made by other handsets. The 5130's 1020mAh battery pack delivers six hours of talk time according to Nokia, which is standard, though the lack of 3G should mean its standby power surpasses what you might otherwise expect from a large screen smartphone.

Overall

There are a few places we can understand that Nokia could skimp on when it comes to building a budget handset; slow internet and a low-res camera are forgivable in a sub-AU$150 handset, but shoddy build quality and poor call quality are not.