Nokia 5230 Nuron Review

24th March 2010

Nokia 5230 Nuron

The moment you take the Nuron out of the box, you’ll know it’s in your hand. It’s not necessarily all that heavy, so to speak, but considering the plastic build of the device, we would have been happier with a little bit of a lighter feel. Though, considering how thick the handset is, we can understand where the weight comes from. The 3.2-inch screen seems smaller than the specifications would suggest, and we imagine that comes from the large areas at the top and bottom, which have been reserved for the earpiece and sensors at the top, and the three hardware buttons on the bottom. Even the silver bezel seems thick on the sides, only aiding in the illusion that the screen is smaller than it really is.

As for the hardware keys, there’s quite a few on the Nuron. You’ve got the three main keys on the front of the device: Send, End, and the button that calls up the main menu. Just above the screen, you have the Media Button, which, when pressed, drops down a menu that gives you quick access to media components like music, the browser, and images. Along the right side of the device is the physical camera key, the notorious Nokia “slide-to-unlock” key, and finally the volume rocker. It should also be noted that the volume rocker also works as a zoom-in-and-out function, but we could only find that it works while using the camera. It doesn’t zoom in while using the browser, for example.

At the top of the device, there’s the MicroUSB port, the 3.5mm audio jack, and an old-school Nokia power port. Which, if we’re being completely honest, we didn’t even think were being used anymore. Nokia slipped a surprise in here for us, it seems. And finally, on the left hand side of the Nuron, there’s two ports protected by removable flaps. The upper-most opening is for the SIM card, and the one below that is for the MicroSD card. We found that opening both of those flaps was a bit of a pain, and more work than was probably necessary. But, we also know that people aren’t going to be opening and closing those very often, so that’s probably a non-issue.

For the general look and feel of the device, we can’t really dock Nokia any points. The device looks like a Nokia device, and there’s definitely nothing wrong with that. It’s shiny, which should attract several new customers, and it’s thick enough that it may not worry many people who are notorious for dropping their phones. All in all, even if it is too thick and heavy for us, we don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing for most customers out there. It does feel good in the pocket.

We thought that not having WiFi wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but it really is. Utilizing T-Mobile’s 3G network is great, but the browser on the Nuron isn’t. In fact, we really didn’t want to use it anymore after the first day. We’re not sure if jumping onto a WiFi hotspot would have made it any better, truth be told, but at least it would have been nice to try. Navigating webpages wasn’t hindered by the 3.2-inch screen. No, in this case, the processor just wouldn’t allow web surfing to be anything other than torment, as pages juttered, lagged, and completely stalled on every occasion.

The title should probably be more than enough, but we’ll go ahead and expand on this. We’re not saying that resistive touchscreens are terrible, but the Nuron’s is definitely a petition in that regard. We may just be accustomed to capacitive panels, but going through menus, or even selecting options (when coupled with the lag generated by the slow processor), is aggravating. We do like, though, that while you’re selecting items in the menu, that you have to actually select something twice. So, even though you’re probably not accidentally activating anything on a resistive touchscreen, Nokia has made sure that you are absolutely sure of what you want before it activates.

Text messages are a big part of cellphone usage. It’s no different for us, and that’s why we gave texting a real shot on the Nuron. However, we just had to stop doing it. The keyboard, while in portrait mode, is usable, but there’s no full QWERTY. It’s just the standard option for phones, with the number pad. You have the option to use T9 while you tap along, so that helps a bit, but the screen is just not forgiving. If you use your fingernail, you can probably get some speed out of it. And then there’s the landscape QWERTY keyboard. We don’t have the world’s skinniest fingers, but we don’t think even that would help the typing experience on this device. It’s just not fun, to put it plainly. The phone’s features work in conjunction to make it an experience we don’t recommend to anyone, so maybe you should stick to the voice calls.

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