T-Mobile adds a new musical slider to its lineup, with an updated look and improved camera. Get the details in our in-depth Nokia 5610 review.
Review summary of the Nokia 5610 XpressMusic:
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 We hate to be the bearers of faint praise, but the Nokia 5610 is a good music phone. It isn't great. In fact, it isn't even as good as the Nokia 5310, a phone with a better design that is available for half the price, $50 instead of $100. That phone may lack the improved camera we found on the Nokia 5610, and it only comes with a 1GB memory stick instead of 2GB, but we prefer the Nokia 5310 for its 3.5mm headphone jack, which let us use any headphones we had on hand, and its up-front controls that start playing music as soon as you press the button. Besides the improved camera, the Nokia 5610 offers little benefit over the Nokia 5310, and they're both good phones, but the Nokia 5310 feels like a step forward, while the Nokia 5610 is a step back. Release: August 2008. Price: $100.
Pros: Classy look. Camera beat our expectations. Good music feature set.
Cons: Lacks some of the ease of the cheaper Nokia 5310. Music features should be more compelling, quicker to acceess. 3.5mm headphone jack a necessity.
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Full Nokia 5610 XpressMusic Review:
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Design - Good
The Nokia 5610 is an attractive update to the Nokia 5300 XpressMusic phone, keeping the slider style and rounded corners but abandoning the soft touch finish and rubber grip of the latter phone. We liked the older phone, and we might have been compelled to appreciate the update, except that T-Mobile recently launched the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic, which keeps the instant-on play button of the Nokia 5300 and packs those music features into one of the slimmest, tighest candybar phones Nokia has ever made. By comparison, the Nokia 5610 seems bulky, the plastic a bit on the cheap side. Though it does have a two-way switch that jumps right to the music player, it lacks the immediacy of the instant play buttons and playback controls on the face of other XpressMusic phones.
Nokia's naming conventions suggest this phone is a feature bump over the Nokia 5310, and it's true that there is a 3.2-megapixel camera with auto focus around back, as well as a 2GB microSD card tucked inside the retail box. Otherwise, the interface is nearly identical to the Nokia 5310. A standard-looking, S40-ish user interface with some light organizational problems is what we found on the Nokia 5610, though we would have liked something more . . . musical.
The phone features that two-way switch under the screen, and we would have preferred some customization option there. Flick it to the left and the music player app opens up. Flick to the right and the radio appears. Now, we're not saying that nobody listens to the radio on their cell phone, but we don't, so we would have preferred a separate option, like jumping directly to the "Now Playing" screen, or perhaps the Web browser.
Calling - Very good
Call quality with the Nokia 5610 sounded similar to the call quality we experienced on the Nokia 5310. When reception was at its best, calls sounded clean and even a little bright, which we liked. But we had reception problems with this phone, just as we had issues with the Nokia 5310. In Manhattan, reception was okay, but never more than 3 bars in our East Village offices. In suburban New Jersey, the phone couldn't manage a single bar in our home office. Still, talk time was better than expected; we managed a call that lasted more than 5 hours, while T-Mobile only promises 4.
For calling features, we were pleased with a few carry-overs from the XpressMusic family. Like the other XpressMusic phones, the Nokia 5610 has a very loud speakerphone, capable of blasting a conversation across a row of cubicles. Conference calling wasn't a problem, but the voice dialing app on the Nokia 5610 has some issues. On some phones, Nokia uses a voice dialing app that needs to be trained, but some of the 13 training phrases are ambiguous. How to pronounce the last name "Askew?" Or "Comer?" Perhaps these issues were the reason the voice dialer only got our choice right once in ten tries. The Nokia 5310 we reviewed back in May had a similar app, though we didn't have the same problems.
Messaging - Very good
The Nokia 5610 happily surprised us with its wealth of messaging options. SMS and MMS messaging were obvious features, and both worked well on this phone. We especially liked the phone's keypad. The humped keys were easy to find by touch, and though the entire phone is somewhat narrow, tapping out messages was easier than we expected. We were surprised to find a robust selection of IM and e-mail clients. Though they weren't especially good looking or feature rich, both the IM and e-mail apps came with plenty of preloaded clients. These included AOL, MSN, Yahoo and ICQ for instant messaging and a host of e-mail providers, including Apple's .Mac service and Verizon's ISP e-mail service. Of course, these are simple POP accounts, but we've seen many phones that lack even Gmail support built-in, let alone support for major competitors. We'd like to see Gtalk or Jabber make it's way to IM clients, but this is still a rarity.
Music - Good
The Nokia 5610 XpressMusic should be a dedicated music phone; after all, it's right there in the name. The music player app on the Nokia XpressMusic phones never blew us away, though it is certainly competent. It has EQ controls, plenty of playback options, and even playlist creation on the phone. It isn't as intuitive or stylish as Sony Ericsson's Walkman phones, like the Sony Ericsson W580, but we usually forgave the half-hearted media player because the phone's design was so centered around music playback. Unfortunately, with the Nokia 5610 the manufacturer seems to have fallen out of rhythm. The phone lacks dedicated playback controls up top. Flicking the switch opens up the FM radio or the music player menu, it doesn't actually start the music. Press the play button in the center and you're more likely to call one of your MyFaves contacts, since that's its top-level purpose. We miss the instant-on play button on the Nokia 5300 and 5310 XpressMusic phones.
We also miss the 3.5mm headphone jack on the Nokia 5310. It's unfortunate that the less expensive phone, the 5310, would have this more compatible option while the deluxe slider model uses the less common 2.5mm standard. Nokia includes a headphone adapter with a built-in microphone remote, but with a music phone we'd much rather use our own cans. In addition to the headphone and remote, T-Mobile is also throwing in some memory. The T-Mobile Web site says it will be a 1GB card, while T-Mobile's press release says 2GB, which makes more sense at this price. In either case, this won't compete with the 16GBs of memory in a phone like the iPhone 3G, but it should be plenty for working out and daily commuting.
Camera - Good
For a music phone, we were actually pretty impressed by the images we got from the 3.2-megapixel camera on the Nokia 5610. It wasn't the high megapixels that lured us in. We liked the auto focus lens, which wasn't always perfect for self-portraits but did a fine job with still life shots. We also found colors to be accurate and, though we did see a fair amount of noise, the camera managed to eke out some fine details. Not terrible for a point-and-shoot, which means it's a very impressive camera phone.
Snake Eyes
Here, you can see the edges of the cardboard and the figures aren't too sharp, but some of the fine details, including the lot numbers up top, are legible. Colors are bright and accurate.
Working Late Happy Snap with built-in flash
Our bleary-eyed editor braves the bright LED flash on the back of the Nokia 5610. It was difficult to feel the two-stage button for auto focus, so occasionally we ended up blurry in our self-portraits.
Price and availability
The Nokia 5610 XpressMusic is available now from T-Mobile for $100 with a two-year contract agreement.
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