Digital Trends

Nokia XpressMusic 5610

October 10th, 2008 | by Nick Mokey

Features and Design

As part of its full-on pitch to music fans, Nokia has equipped the XpressMusic a personal media player, FM radio, and even a capable built-in speaker. The interface also gets a special addition to its interface for switching to the music player in a snap via a smooth slider switch just below the screen. Its youth-centered feature-set has also been rounded out with communication tools that are fast becoming standard on mobile handsets, including IM, 3G Web access, instant messaging, e-mail.

Form-Factor

Nokia's well-documented love of the candybar shape shines through clearly in the XpressMusic, which takes on a rather bland but practical rectangular profile with rounded corners. What it lacks in exciting shapes, it seems to make up for in dimensions. At just 3.88 inches tall, it matches the popular Motorola Razr in height but with less width and just a bit more beef front to back - 0.67 inches. We found the shape highly easy to pocket, and the weight of 111 grams perfectly acceptable for a phone its size. 

Although the face of the phone has been drenched head-to-toe in gloss black, Nokia's choice of materials on the rest of the phone gravitated more toward the more pragmatic. Matte plastics with a dry, papery feel don't quite produce the dramatic, sultry look of glossier phones, but we liked the how secure they made the phone feel in our hands, and the practicality of not having to wipe away fingerprints all the time. The slim line of red aluminum that accented our review model looked quite vibrant and added some much-needed spice to the design.

Ports & Connectors

Rather nonsensically for a phone that makes music its number one priority, Nokia chose to skip the universally standard 3.5mm stereo jack in favor of a smaller 2.5mm jack. While the package does include a rather short extension that converts to 3.5mm, we found the extra accessory to carry (and the possibility of losing it) irritating for a phone that should have native compatibility with standard headsets. Adopting similarly esoteric standards, the phone uses a rare type of ultra-small power connector for charging, and the hardly used Micro-B USB standard for data connections. While none of these connectors can be called proprietary, and all function flawlessly, we would have preferred to see more commonly used jacks, especially on the USB front, to make the XpressMusic more compatible with common cables.

Under the Nokia's rear battery panel, it includes a discrete slot for a microSD card. Though the included card only offers 128MB of storage, current cards in this format are available up to 4GB, usually for well under $50. Of course, even maxed out, the phone’s capacity won’t approach even half of the low-capacity 8GB iPod, making it a player for short trips at best, not a true option for storing an entire collection (for most people).