Nokia 5310 XpressMusic

Boasting a slim frame and a 3.5mm headphone jack, Nokia's 5310 XpressMusic joins a market flooded with mobile phones boasting music playback capabilities. Although it doesn't offer any outstanding features, its compact size and slim frame combined with the renowned Symbian interface make it a recommended handset, and it comes at a reasonable price.

Unlike its big brother, the 5610 XpressMusic, the 5310 XpressMusic boasts a minimalist design. Apart from the music playback controls residing in a somewhat obscure place to the left of the display, you'd be hard pressed to tell this is a music handset. The size and weight is almost perfect, and the controls and keypad are comfortable and easy to use. The 5310 XpressMusic is very well constructed and feels sturdy.

Although it's not outstanding, the 5310's dedicated music player does a reasonable job. The interface is versatile and user-friendly, and it is laid out in a simple list format. You can sort tracks by artists, albums and genres. There are settings for shuffle and repeat playback, and a fully adjustable five-band equaliser.

Thankfully, the phone also comes with a standard 3.5mm headphone jack. The 5310 is one of a range of handsets suitable for use with Nokia's newly launched Australian Music Store. The 5310 also has a built-in FM radio, but you need the included antenna attachment to use it. We didn't receive the best FM reception — in particular, the 5310 struggled indoors despite other dedicated radio units working without problems in the same area.

Although the 5310 XpressMusic comes bundled with a 1GB microSD card, we can't help but feel some extra internal memory would have been a nice addition. Anyone seriously considering using it as their primary music player will probably need to purchase another microSD card or two, resulting in extra costs.

Perhaps the 5310 XpressMusic's biggest disappointment is the lack of 3G connectivity. With this in mind, Web browsing on this phone isn't recommended. Although the included Opera Web browser is decent, slow GPRS speeds and expensive data pricing mean you need to look elsewhere if you are after a mobile Web experience. For phone calls, the 5310 performs solidly, but we did note that volume levels, especially when talking in a noisy environment, could be better.

Another sour point is the 5310's general speed. Although the Symbian Series 40 interface is intuitive and easy to use, scrolling through lists and opening folders is much more sluggish than what we are used to. Thankfully, SMS messaging doesn't suffer from the same issue.

Other features of the 5310 include a collection of Java games (including Snake III and City Bloxx), an alarm clock, a calendar, a to-do list, notes, a stopwatch and Push-to-Talk (PTT). Nokia also allows users to access Yahoo! Go, an application providing access to services like Yahoo! Mail and Flickr.