Nokia 5730 XpressMusic: The multi-tasking music phone

MANILA, Philippines - Take the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic, cross it with the Nokia E75, and you get the Nokia 5730 XpressMusic — a music phone that blends fun and youthful features with business-like applications.

The 5730 XpressMusic is Nokia’s first music-optimized device to offer a full QWERTY keyboard for quick messaging and data input. The heart of this music device is the Homescreen for XpressMusic, which provides access and dynamic information on music, people, games, e-mail and calendar.

The Homescreen features an improved contacts bar with up to 20 friends and family members and provides direct access to music, N-Gage and other applications, like Facebook, Photos, Ovi Contacts, Maps, messaging and more.

With Ovi Contacts, people see which friends are online, chat, and even view what music they are listening to. Other apps include other popular social networking sites like MySpace and Friendster, as well as Home Media (where you can connect to your server and share files wirelessly), and even an integrated A-GPS navigation system.

The 5730 XpressMusic is Wi-Fi-enabled and comes with a brilliant and clear 2.4-inch QVGA screen so browsing the Internet is an enjoyable experience. It has full Flash and Java support, which means that you can watch YouTube videos without launching RealPlayer.

The 5730 XpressMusic’s form factor is a classic shiny candy bar, but it also slides sideways to reveal a QWERTY keyboard. If the phone had a touch screen, it could very well give the company’s N97 flagship a run for its money.

The 5730’s built-in 3.2-megapixel camera boasts of superb Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus capability, and a powerful LED flash. Image quality is excellent, with the sharpness and the colors of both videos and stills brilliantly and accurately rendered.

Into mobile gaming? The 5730 is also a full-fledged N-Gage device with preloaded games and dedicated gaming keys. It also allows you to have direct access and interact with the online N-Gage community. Users can connect, compete and even compare high scores with online friends.

As expected from a Nokia XpressMusic device, the 5730 supports a wide variety of audio formats and comes with an FM radio with RDS-capability. There are dedicated music keys that allow one-touch access to the handset’s music applications.

There is even a cool “Say and Play” feature with which you control the music player using your voice. A microSD card slot ups the phone’s 100MB internal memory storage requirements for those who like to keep lots of songs and photos with them.

The Music shortcut offers a quick access to the music stored on the device as well as to the Nokia Music Store where they can find information on artists, music and over-the-air downloads, directly on the device.

The built-in stereo speakers produce decently powerful and clear sound that’s good for sharing between friends in a small room. However, if you want to keep your music to yourself, the phone comes packaged with a pair of Nokia Bluetooth Stereo Headset (BH-504), which blocks out a good amount of ambient noise. Nokia also created the Nokia Mobile Holder CR-110 to keep the 5730 XpressMusic firmly in place.

All things considered, the 5730 XpressMusic is the ideal multi-tasking gadget for music lovers and the gamers who nonetheless require a fairly high level of productivity from their communication device.