Nokia C5-03 disadvantages

Introduction

When touchscreen became affordable its popularity skyrocketed – affordable smartphones are all the rage now. The Nokia C5-03 is the result of both these trends and while it borrows a lot from the C6-01 in terms of design, its pricing is a good deal lower.

Designed for a lower price bracket than its Symbian^3 lookalike, the Nokia C5-03 has some of its specs taken down a notch.

The Nokia C5-03 is a grandson of the best-selling Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and though it might be the last hurrah for Symbian^1 (or Symbian S60 as old-timers call it) it tries to deliver the same level of satisfaction on the bang for buck meter.

Key features

·                 Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support 

·                 Tri-band 3G with 10.2 Mbps HSDPA and 2 Mbps HSUPA support 

·                 3.2" 16M-color TFT LCD resistive touchscreen of 640 x 360 pixel resolution 

·                 5 megapixel fixed-focus camera and VGA video @ 15fps recording; geotagging

·                 Symbian S60 OS 

·                 600 MHz ARM 11 CPU and 128 MB RAM 

·                 Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g; UPnP

·                 GPS receiver with A-GPS support and free lifetime voice-guided navigation; free city guides and traffic information

·                 Digital compass 

·                 40MB on-board storage, microSD expandable up to 16GB; 2GB card included

·                 Built-in accelerometer

·                 Standard 3.5 mm audio jack 

·                 Stereo FM Radio with RDS

·                 microUSB port (charging)

·                 Flash and Java support in the web browser

·                 Stereo Bluetooth 2.0

·                 Very good audio quality 

·                 Voice commands 

Main disadvantages

·                 Symbian S60 hasn’t aged well

·                 Relatively limited 3rd party software availability

·                 Screen has poor viewing angles and behaves badly in the sun

·                 The camera is a fixed-focus unit with no flash, shutter key or lens protection

·                 No office document editing (without a paid upgrade); No PDF viewer

·                 No proximity and ambient light sensors

·                 No DivX or XviD video support out of the box

·                 No video-call camera

·                 No smart dialing

The C5-03 is a very eco-friendly gadget – 80% of the phone body is recyclable, while half of the packaging comes from recycled material (and all of it is recyclable in turn).

It’s a low-price phone with some high-speed connectivity with 10.2Mbps HSDPA and 2Mbps HSUPA. The C5-03 also packs the fastest CPU available on a Nokia S60 device – at 600MHz the old but efficient Symbian just flies.

The free voice-guided navigation is the single biggest advantage of Symbian-powered Nokias, one that is still unmatched by any other brand or platform. The Nokia C5-03 is a trusty SatNav unit, which will work anywhere in the world and free of charge – you can download all the maps you need (won’t cost you a thing) and Ovi Maps don’t need a data connection to work.

Navigate to the next page for a tour of the Nokia C5-03 hardware – but first, we make a stop at the retail box and the 360-degree showroom