T-Mobile's latest XpressMusic phone offers simplicity and great music playback. Check it out in our Nokia 5130 review.
Review summary of the Nokia 5130:
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 We're fans of Nokia's XpressMusic phones because they're so single-minded. Just push the Play button on the phone and the music starts. No muss, no fuss. But our fanaticism can only go so far, and though we like the updated look of the Nokia 5130, we have to admit that the music player and the multimedia experience felt dated and unappealing, especially compared with competition like Sony Ericsson's excellent Walkman music player on their Walkman phones. Even so, the unique look, with its luscious colored plastics, sleek design and bouncing light display, is sure to win fans, and at this low price point, the phone makes a great replacement if you're still carrying around a simple cell phone and iPod. Release: September 2009. Price: $30.
Pros: Jump quickly into your music. Stylish, sleek look in cool colors. Powerful speaker and music playback controls.
Cons: Mediocre screen quality. Lousy voice dialing.
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Full Nokia 5130 Review:
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Design – Very Good
The Nokia 5130 is a classic Nokia design, keeping the elements of the XpressMusic family that we've always enjoyed, while retaining the company's slightly rounded candy bar aesthetic. The phone is a slight departure from the Nokia 5310, a phone we reviewed more than a year ago. The latter is still available from T-Mobile, now free with a contract. We like that the Nokia 5130 keeps the external playback controls of the Nokia 5310, but otherwise it's a larger phone in every dimension, especially it's thickness, where the Nokia 5130 is about 50% thicker than the thin, dense Nokia 5310. The Nokia 5130 is also more than a half ounce heavier, though it's now clad mostly in glossy plastic, instead of the metal shell of the 5310. This gives the phone a lighter feel, more playful than serious, and the plastic lets Nokia use some interesting textures and embossed styles to create a very modern looking device.
We didn't like the port covers on the phone. The microUSB port and the microSD slot both have small plastic covers, and while this presents a cleaner look for the rim of the phone, these covers were difficult to open, and the USB cover especially was always in the way when we tried to plug in the USB cable.
The display on the Nokia 5130 is disappointing, especially for a Nokia device. The colors waver enough as you rotate the phone in your hand that your left and right eye will see the display slightly differently, creating a flickering effect that was unpleasant in normal use.
Though it was easy to jump into the music features, it was more difficult to navigate between features, backing in and out of various menus. The phone also seemed sluggish moving the cursor from icon to icon or tab to tab.
Calling – Good
Calls on the Nokia 5130 sounded good, but not great. Voices sounded clean, with little distortion, but we heard a constant, high-pitched static during our conversations. The phone saw mediocre reception on T-Mobile's network in the greater Dallas area, receiving only 2 bars of service on average, which was less than some other T-Mobile phones we have on hand. Battery life was improved from the Nokia 5310, and we got more than 5 hours of talking time out of a single call. However, for a phone with so few features and slower EDGE networking, we were hoping for some truly astounding battery time with this device.
For calling features, the Nokia 5130 lags behind, with one notable standout. Thanks to a large speaker on the back of the phone, clearly meant for music playback, the phone has a nice, loud speakerphone. We were easily able to carry on a conversation in our car on speakerphone with loud driving noises all around. Otherwise, don't expect much. The phone has voice dialing, but after we went through the confusing and ambiguous Nokia training session, the Nokia 5130 still had trouble guessing our spoken commands. The phone managed to guess correctly about 30% of the time, which is pretty much useless for hands-free callers.
Messaging - Good
For messaging fans, the Nokia 5130 comes with a nice set of features, and a couple surprises. It still lacks some of our modern favorites, especially threaded messaging, which presents text messages as a conversation. Instead, you get to see one message at a time on the Nokia 5130. For instant messaging fans, though, the Nokia 5130 includes presets for AOL, MSN and Yahoo, but also surprises with Google Gtalk service and even MySpace IM. We like seeing MySpace on more phones, as we think social networking services make a great conduit for instant messaging. For e-mail the pickings are a little more slim, as the phone comes with limited presets for setting up e-mail, but our favorite services were represented, including Gmail and Yahoo, as well as some other popular providers.
The keypad on the Nokia 5130 did not make for easy typing. Though the phone is wider than its predecessor, the keys are stuffed into a more narrow band in the middle, with a wide, sloping rim around the edge. The keys were too glossy to be comfortable, and the shiny silver paint against the matte silver backing did not make reading digits easy. If you can't touch type text messages, you'll have to find the right lighting to see the keys well.
Music – Very Good
Music is the name of the game for the Nokia 5130, and as we've said many times, we like the directness of the music playback features. There are controls on the left side of the device, and as soon as you press play, the music starts. Even if you're in another app, you can press play and hear music. The Nokia 5130 also comes with good hardware for listening. Besides the necessary 3.5mm headphone jack on top, which let us use our favorite ear buds instead of the chunky buds bundled in the retail package, the phone also has a very nice speaker. Bass was lacking, but the speaker was loud and clean, able to fill a small room with sound.
Though playback was great on the Nokia 5130, the music player app itself, and the navigation between the different music screens, needs serious work. Nokia should borrow a play from Sony Ericsson's book, as the latter company's Walman phones, like the Sony Ericsson W760 that's now available on AT&T for the same price as the Nokia 5130, specialize in making it easy to navigate through the music player to easily find your tunes, create playlists and more. Not so much with the Nokia 5130, which uses a more difficult and counterintuitive menu scheme. We did like the abundance of audio control, which let us set our own equalizer and enhanced the sound with stereo widening effects. We were also enthusiastic about the fun dancing lights display, which lights up the side of the phone above the playback keys, but the lights didn't seem to dance in rhythm to the music, so the effect fell flat.
The Nokia 5130 also has a simple video player, but this is confusingly mixed in with the audio player library. You can play videos up to the QVGA resolution of the phone's display, but the Nokia 5130 can't downsize larger videos to fit the screen, which was a hassle. Even more of a hassle is the fact that the movie playback is also tied to the music buttons on the side of the phone. So, if you were watching a video earlier in the day and then you press the Play button to hear some tunes, the player picks up your last request and starts playing the movie soundtrack. Better to just skip video playback altogether than make it a disappointing, confusing feature.
Web browsing, camera and more – Mediocre
If you're looking for a phone that makes good calls and does a great job playing music, a simple device to replace, say, a basic calling phone and an iPod nano, the Nokia 5130 should be your perfect match. However, as far as other multimedia features are concerned, we found the quality to be below average. We haven't had the chance to play with the Nokia 5630 yet, but it looks like Nokia wants you to consider the 5130's big brother for a more versatile multimedia experience.
Price and availability
The Nokia 5130 is available now from T-Mobile for $30 with a contract agreement.
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