Familiar music player

Rightly enough, the music player headlines the XpressMusic show. Nokia doesn't throw any curve-balls for regular operation; it's maintained a familiar set of track categories (artists, albums, playlists, all songs, podcasts, genres and composers) and user options in its music player, and the usual album cover art is supported if available. You don't even have to use the external controls when the music player's onscreen, with the D-pad doubling up on music control duties.

The novel Say and Play voice control gadgetry is intriguing, but only partially effective. You press and hold the button above the display, then call out the name of the artist, artist and song, album or playlist; in a few moments (in theory) the track pops up and plays, with a list of selectable alternative results presented onscreen for a few seconds.

Trouble is, it didn't always pull up the tracks we called, and had a random shuffle-like element to it. It's neat and impressive when it works – and definitely the sort of gimmick you'll show off to impress your mates – but realistically, it's not the most effective way of choosing tracks. You might find it a bit of fun though, if you're not frustrated by the lottery factor.

Using conventional music player control methods, however, the 5320 is an absolute breeze to operate. And its audio performance can be excellent.

Poor earphones

Nokia supplies an average set of 2-piece earphones, which really don't do full justice to the sound this device can blast out. But the 3.5mm headphone socket provides an easy (and not necessarily expensive) way to upgrade these so you can make the most of the top-class audio experience of which this phone is capable. Through decent ear-wear you can get rich, deep and complex sound that's very pleasing.

Bluetooth headphones are also supported, and if you want to share music with the public, the loudspeaker can really broadcast at loud volumes.

Entertainment features

The out-of-the-box track storage is reasonable for a lower level music phone, but not exceptional, but higher capacity cards than the 1GB one supplied can be added for reasonably small cost.

Adding entertainment, the 5320 has an FM radio onboard too, and a Podcasting application enables fast searching, subscribing and downloading of podcasts. Downloads from mobile network operators can be fast, thanks to HSDPA connectivity at up to 3.6Mbps max. Downloads of videos or music can take just a few seconds.

Nokia Music Store is supported, too, enabling users to stock up on more tracks over the air as well copying over from a PC. Downloading from here will cost – it's not currently part of Nokia's Comes With Music portfolio (and data costs may have to be added to track prices).

HSDPA means you get a sharpish browsing experience too. It's pretty efficient, without being iPhone-like impressive, and you can view pages in full screen, zoom and pan, with a navigation toolbar to help you along. Pages render speedily, although the small screen view is not ideal for easy on the eye scanning or browsing. Nokia's larger screened models are certainly better for this. RSS feeds are supported on this handset.

Camera action

Nokia hasn't put imaging top of the XpressMusic priorities. The camera is an average kind of Nokia 2-megapixel shooter - although there is a camera button on the side, and on the back of the phone there is an LED photo light, which offers a bit more for low-light illumination than you'd get on a basic entry-level 2 million pixel model.

Still, the shooting performance wasn't impressive. There's no autofocus to help out, but shots are still softer than we'd have expected, and colours generally appeared a bit subdued and lifeless.

There's a typical roster of shooting adjustments you can make and effects you can add, but the quality and results are way off what Nokia's better mid-tier shooters can achieve, not to mention its Nseries big-hitters.