Nokia 5230 vs 5800 XpressMusic

Nokia 5230

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

Looking at the above two images it is difficult to differentiate  between the two phones. Nokia is expanding its touch range by launching new phones with little variations for different price segments.The left one is the newly launched Nokia 5230 which looks exactly same as Nokia’s bestseller 5800 XpressMusic. Nokia 5230 is  a stripped down version of 5800. It retains most of the essential features of its predecessor. Nokia has cut down few features to in order to reduce the price so that i can compete with Samsung Star and LG Cookie KP500. Cutting down to essential features has resulted in a good price drop.

Lets see which features are retained and what is left out in Nokia 5230  -

Exterior – As you can see, in appearance Nokia 5230 is a true copy of 5800 with same 3.2 inch display and 3 hardware keys below the display

Display – Nokia 5230 retains the same big, 360×640 pixels display with 16 Million Colors and resistive touchscreen.

Hardware – Nokia 5800′s processor was clocked at 369 MHz at the time of its release which is now 434 MHz after a recent firmware update. Nokia 5230 has same 434 MHz CPU and 128 MB RAM as 5800.

Software – Both 5230 and 5800 are based on the same Symbian S60v5 operating system, but 5230 has an upper edge as it has got the new improved homescreen and kinetic scrolling same as 5530 XpressMusic and N97.

Memory – When the price is reduced the sales package also gets affected. Same thing happened with Nokia 5230. This time there is no memory card in sales package. Nokia 5800 comes with 8 GB Micro SD card.

Music – By now you may have noticed that Nokia 5230 doesn’t belong to XpressMusic range. As a result, it lacks stereo speakers, but retains the 3.5 mm standard audio jack. Nokia 5230 has Stereo FM with RDS. I can’t say anything about the audio quality as its not released yet.

Camera – Camera Mega pixels are reduced from 3.2 to 2.0. The bad news is that 5230 lacks flash. The good news is that it can record QVGA DVD quality videos (at 30 fps) same as 5800.

Connectivity – Nokia 5230 retains all the connecticvity features of 5800 XpressMusic except Wifi. It  has USB 2.0, GPRS, EDGE, Bluetooth with A2DP, 3G (HSDPA), and GPS as connectivity options.

Additional Features – Nokia 5230 has Accelerometer and Proximity Sensor but lacks TV Output feature.

Battery - Nokia 5230 has the same powerful BL-5J (1320 mAh) battery which can give up yo 33 Hrs of music playback

Price – Expected launch price of Nokia 5230 is $199 and 5800 XpressMusic is currently available at Amazon for $269.

Conclusion – Nokia 5230 has average camera without flash, lacks Wifi, TV output and has no memory card in sales package. If you are on a tight budget and can manage with the above mentioned drawbacks, Nokia 5230 is for you.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 10:34 am and is filed under Comparison. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.