Nokia 5230 vs Samsung Star S5230 Tocco Lite vs LG Cookie KP500

Nokia 5230 falls in the same price range as Samsung Star and LG KP500 but differs a lot in features and functionality.While 5230 is a true smartphone based on Symbian Operating system, Samsung Star and LG Cookie are non-smartphones. Later on i will tell you what are the advantages of a smartphone over non-smartphone. Now Let’s see where does Nokia 5230 stand in comparison to Samsung Star and LG KP500.

Nokia 5230

Samsung Star

LG KP500

Design - Design wise  all 3 are nearly same with candybar form factor and touchscreen occupying the major front portion.The navigation D pad is missing from all of them so you have to get used to touchscreen input for navigation.

Display - Nokia 5230 is equipped with a better display, in size as well as resolution. 5230 has a 3.2 inch, 360×640 pixels display with 16 Million colors whereas Tocco Lite has a 3 inch, 240×400 Pixels screen resolution with 256k colors. This means pictures will look more sharp and vibrant on Nokia 5230.

Software - I already told you that Nokia 5230 is a smartphone based on Symbian S60v5 operating system. A smartphone is like a mini laptop with huge catalog of 3rd party applications. You will be surprised to know that you can perform most of the tasks that you do on your PC through 3rd party applications. The other smartphones based on this OS are Nokia 5530, Nokia 5800, Nokia N97, Nokia N97 Mini, Nokia X6, Samsung Innov8, Samsung Omnia HD and Sony Ericsson Satio (Idou).
Nokia 5230 has the new kinetic scrolling feature same as Nokia 5530. It is quite cool and works through the entire User Interface.
LG Cookie and Samsung Star comes with widgetized interface through which you can create shortcuts on homescreen in the form of widgets.
Samsung star has a unique feature called smart unlock though which you can unlock phone or launch applications simply by drawing an alphabet on touchscreen. For example, drawing “C”  to launch Calculator.

Hardware - Nokia 523o has got a powerful hardware considering its low price tag. It has a fast 434 MHz processor (CPU) and 128 MB RAM. Usually smartphones in this price range have 64 MB RAM which is insufficient for multitasking i.e. running more than one application at a time.
As Samsung Star and LG Cookie belongs to non-smartphone category, CPU and RAM figures are unknown.

Connectivity - Nokia 5230 offers a wide range of connectivity options including GPRS, EDGE, 3G and GPS. 5230 lacks Wifi. Samsung star comes in 3 variants , one without 3G and Wifi, one with only wifi and one with only 3G. Star Wifi is the recently launched model. LG Kp500 lacks these high speed connectivity options.
Nokia 5230 has added advantage of GPS over Samsung Star and LG Cookie.

Camera - Samsung Star and LG Kp500 has 3.2 MP Fixed Focus Camera without flash. Nokia 5230 has 2 MP without flash, but it can record high quality QVGA (640×480 p) videos at 30 frames per second. The Video Frame Rate of Star is 15 fps and that of KP500 is 12 fps.

Multimedia – Samsung Star has DNSE (Digital Natural Sound Engine) technology for improved audio quality. But, both Samsung Star and LG Cookie lacks 3.5 mm satandard jack which is present in Nokia 5230. 3.5 mm jack allows you to plug in your own high quality earphones to get the most out of your phone’s MP3 Player.
All the three have got big display so watching movies would be a pleasure. On Nokia 5230  you can play DVD Rip movies directly without conversion through 3rd party software such as Smartmovie Player or Core Codec Player.
For playing full movies on Samsung Star and LG Cookie you have to first convert into a compatible format such as MP4 or 3GP which is a time consuming process and reduces the video quality.

Web Browser – Nokia 5230 has Series 60 HTML web browser with full Javascript and Flash support that means the web pages will look same as your PC web browser and you can play Youtube videos directly on your phone.

Battery - Among the 3 Nokia 5230 has the most powerful 1320 mAh battery. Samsung Star has 1000 mAh battery whereas LG Cookie has 900 mAh battery.

Price – Unlocked LG Cookie is currently available at Amazon for $160. Samsung Star is priced at $190 at Amazon and Nokia 5230 is expected to launch for around $200.

Conclusion – If you are on a tight budget and need a basic touchscreen phone than LG KP500 is the cheapest option among the three. Samsung Star offers you high speed connectivity options and widget interface for $190. If you are ready to invest a little more than you can get a true Symbian Smartphone, Nokia 5230  with added advantage of bigger & higher resolution display, Camera with Flash and QVGA 30fps video recording and GPS.

Now, you are the one to decide which one is most suitable for you.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 16th, 2009 at 12:13 am and is filed under Comparison, Competitors. 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.