Nokia 5730 XpressMusic review

A new mid-range music phone with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard

nokia 5730 xpressmusic
The 5730 XpressMusic is Nokia's latest music phone

Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

5730

The Nokia 5730 XpressMusic puts in a good, solid battery performance. Nokia estimates that it will deliver talktime of up to 4.2 hours on 3G networks (or 8.3 hours in GSM-only coverage), and has a standby time of up to 400 hours.

Alternatively, with music playback alone, the 5730 XpressMusic can keep going for up to 25 hours. Solo, Wi-Fi usage will keep running for up to 7.8 hours, Nokia claims.

We found that we had to recharge once every three or four days with moderate regular use. Using Wi-Fi and engaging the phone's A-GPS ran it down significantly quicker, while lots of music or video playing will also impact heavily on battery life.

With plenty of features to work the battery power down, individual usage patterns will vary, but compared to other smartphones, the 5730 XpressMusic delivers a long-lasting power performance.

Organiser

Although music and messaging are its selling points, a typically competent suite of S60 organiser functionality is embedded in the 5730 XpressMusic.

As well as the extensive contacts management functionality, regulars include notes, Active notes (notes with media attached), calculator, convertor and voice recorder.

voice recorder

A dictionary function provides a way of looking up and translating words in various languages, and pronouncing them to you, while a text to voice app can read messages.

Document viewer software is embedded for email attachments or files downloaded or copied over to the phone. Quickoffice can handle Word, PowerPoint and Excel documents, and you can pay to upgrade the licence so you can also create new documents. An Adobe PDF reader and a Zip file manager are included too.

Connectivity

The Nokia 5730 XpressMusic is suitably well connected for a 3G handset. It supports tri-band WCDMA 900/1900/2100 and quad-band GSM 850/900/1800/1900, with HSDPA (up to 3.6Mbps) and GPRS/EDGE data connectivity.

The handset has Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g support too, enabling fast data access via home Wi-Fi hubs, office Wireless LAN networks or on public Wi-Fi hotspots.

Setting up Wi-Fi is quite straightforward; the phone has a WLAN wizard you can use to connect without any fuss. The connections we had worked fine and sped along the online performance of the device.

Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) sharing of music files and other media with other compatible home media devices via Wi-Fi is supported too, using a Home Media application.

Bluetooth 2.0 is present, supporting A2DP and AVRCP protocols for wireless stereo streaming to headphones or speakers and remote control. USB 2.0 connectivity is included, with a data cable supplied in-box.

SyncML is onboard for remote or local synchronization with a PC or server.