I’m looking for a cell phone for my brother with the following requirements.
Candy bar form factor: I don’t think slide/swivel/flip is a good idea for by bro as he stays in a hostel and drops his phone very often. So, good build quality with minimum moving parts is necessary.
Nice keypad to text: A nice, comfy keypad would be a big plus. This is quite important for him.
Good music phone: Preferably with a 3.5mm jack but a 2.5mm jack will also do I guess as I have a converter.
Decent 2Mpixel or 3.2Mpixel camera: Camera is of lesser priority than music capabilities but should be decent.
I prefer Nokia or Sony Ericsson. I would like a non smartphone as I don’t want him to waste his time fiddling and upgrading his phone.
Budget: I want it at 8k-9K.
Can anyone suggest the ideal phone within these constraints?
Better get a Nokia 5220XM rather than Nokia 5310XM as it has a much larger capacity battery(1050mAh vs 860mAh in 5310).
Only problem in 5220XM is that its build quality is not as good as 5310XM.
Also if you want to you can buy the Nokia 5130XM which costs much less than your allocated budget.
I bought it recently. It has a great build quality(I like it better than my friend’s 5310 which is so slim, feels like it will break in half if I type on its keypad with both hands). Has a great keypad too. Sound quality is superb too and has a 3.5mm jack too.
Also it has a 1020mAh battery.
Thanks for the inputs guys. I was trying to avoid the Nokia 5xxx series as he has a Nokia 5200 and it’s an absolute POS of a phone. Hence, both of us are wary of a Nokia 5xxx series. But, I guess these phones would have improved with time and a colleague has also recommended them.
Can these new phones, i.e. 5130XM, 5220XM and 5310XM handle videos also?
I am looking to buy a phone for my wife similar to what the OP’s requirements are and am considering between 5220 & 5130.
Based on camera performance alone, which would be better out of these two? Does the 5220’s “NIPS” technology for low light photography make a difference?
I meant to ask whether the phones support playback of video. AFAIK, these phones come with some kind of video player. I just want to get an idea of the kinds of files, the phone can playback i.e. supported formats and a user perspective of how the playback is.
Another critical point I forgot to mention for my bro is that the phone should not have any quirks when it comes to backing up phone and contact details on PC. I hope that’s not the case with any of these phones.
Rahul, thanks for the suggestion but after seeing the w810i, I’m spoiled in a way that if I consider an SE phone, it should match w810i capabilities .
I still don’t see a suitable candy bar replacement for the w810i. A review on esato suggested the w902 but I think that’s not available here plus it’s quite pricey.
Considering this, do you have any other suggestion?
Why don’t you check out the GSMArena and Techtree reviews of both these phones. They shoot many pictures and post it in the review. By looking at the pictures, you will get a fair idea which one is better.
Incase of 5220XM, I have heard that its firmware has still not yet stabilised. There are lots of restarts especially while using the music player. While using my 5130XM, my phone has not restarted even once.
I heard one person say that a Nokia Care personnel has said that the 5220XM series is flawed and very problematic.
A new firmware was released by Nokia which stopped the restarting problem but corrupted some files on the phone and so was withdrawn fast.
I suggest you wait for sometime before buying the 5220XM, atleast until the new firmware becomes available.
The video players can playback 3GP and avi files. But the files have to be encoded in 240x320 resolution and have a FPS less than 30.
The player stutters a lot when playing 30 FPS video files.
But the small screen is not conducive for playing videos. Most videos look very bad.
Folks, thanks for all your inputs. Finally went in for a Nokia 6303 @ 7.8K. We decided to drop going in for a Sony Ericsson because I believe, you cannot connect a 3.5mm regular set of earphones to any SE phone (except W series). After a lot of online research, the proprietary connector nonsense of SE just made us fed up. We considered the Nokia 5xxx series but they did not satisfy our requirements for sturdiness plus after using the 5200, my bros’ response was…no Nokia 5xxx phones ever again.
After some research, we found the 6303 to be a good buy because of the following.
Robust Metal construction all over except the camera area which makes it very sturdy and stylish. This fits my requirement for a sturdy phone.
Good keypad with well spaced keys although a little small but much better than say N70 or N73 that I tried. This fits my texting requirement.
Bright display and screen. This makes the phone a joy to use.
Amazingly clear speaker and good music playback with a 3.5mm jack. This fits my requirement for a good music player with the ability to use standard earphones, specifically, my EP-630s.
Very fast and comprehensible user interface. I think it’s S40. It’s very easy to use but I believe not many apps are available. Oh well, my bro managed to install some version of Zesium MobilePDF reader or something like that.
All in all, the phone seems like a true VFM deal. I find it better than the E51 that I got for my dad. The screen is the same if not better and the size makes it feels better in the hand vs the E51. The only drawback of this phone is stated to be the 3.2 megapixel camera which seemed ok to me but I’m yet to transfer the pictures and check out image quality.
If anyone knows of good upgrades for S40, please let me know either in this thread or via PM. I’m sure there are many folks out here very qualified in this dept and can really share their valuable experience.
Thanks . Don’t think a review is possible though as my bro has taken the phone and gone back to his college.
I called up by bro and asked him about this. He mentioned that the phone has a medium ring volume i.e. it cannot be heard amongst a large crowd where there is a lot of hustle-bustle. It’s perfect for office environments though is what he said.
Also, I forgot to mention but this phone has a 1050mAh BL-5CT battery which provides very good battery life. The entire duration for which my bro was fiddling with the phone (2-3 days) it did not require a recharge.
I called up by bro and asked him about this. He mentioned that the phone has a medium ring volume i.e. it cannot be heard amongst a large crowd where there is a lot of hustle-bustle. It’s perfect for office environments though is what he said.
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. Don’t think a review is possible though as my bro has taken the phone and gone back to his college.
