(To get the most out of this article, please watch the video above and then read the text below. If you have any comments or questions, please click on the comments link at the end.)
Nokia 5000
What's it like in real life?
The Nokia 5000 is fairly thin (11 millimetres), light (74g), and feels EXTREMELY solid. It actually feels like a much more expensive phone when you hold it.
The casing is mainly brushed metal with some plastic elements, which means the phone stays fingerprint-free.
The keypad is small but excellent, with solid keys that click well, and ridges on the key rows to make them easy to distinguish by touch. The direction pad has the traditional wide rim for direction control and a separate button in the middle. The keypad is well lit, with a blue light around the edge of the direction pad and bright white light behind the keys.
The 5000's screen is possibly the sharpest so far on a budget phone, with QVGA (240x320 pixel) resolution which is the same as Nokia's smartphones. It's bright and high quality, though it sometimes seems to suffer from a "3d glasses" effect where elements of the background are visible to one eye and not the other. It's hard to describe this effect until you see it, so try the phone in a shop if you can. The effect gets worse the closer you hold the phone, and goes away as the phone is further from you. The effect also seems to be worse with complicated dark wallpapers, which may explain why the default wallpaper is pure white.
How is it as a phone?
Calls sounded great on the 5000, no problems at all with them.
Texting is very good thanks to the well-designed messaging application, which (as well as the usual Contacts list) lets you add recipients from a "recently used" list, or you can use a favourite recipient or choose from a group. This saves a lot of time and bother, because most people usually send far more texts to a small group of people rather than all their contacts.
Another very nice texting feature is the way multimedia messages are handled: instead of having them separate from normal messages, you just write a normal message and then choose a type of file to attach to it, just like you would with an e-mail. This feels a lot easier to cope with than previous separate arrangements, and makes a lot more sense. It's made even easier by having a row of icons below the message that let you choose a file type, including one labelled "Camera" which opens the camera app and automatically attaches the picture you take to the message.
The keypad feels very nice to use. As mentioned above, the keys are small but nicely-shaped, with a smooth curved ridge on each row. Pressing a key feels smooth and solid. The glossy plastic used on the keys has very little friction, so your fingers move over the keypad extremely easily.
What about the interface?
The Nokia 5000 uses the Series 40 5th Edition Feature Pack 1 LE interface. Phew, that's quite a mouthful.
In effect it's a more refined version of the interface seen on earlier phones like the 2760 or 2600 Classic.
For example, the older versions of S40 5th (and S40 3rd too) used to have save buttons at the bottom of options screens, which was annoying as it meant you had to scroll to the bottom to save changes, whereas this version replaces them with a single "save" option labelled above the direction pad's button which is constantly visible.
Another interesting development is on the "Go To" shortcut menu, which is accessed by pressing the left soft key on the standby screen. Usually it's filled with various functions by default, but on the 5000 it's empty by default. When you access the empty list, it prompts you to add whichever features you most use, so you add things you do actually want fast access to.
The QVGA screen makes the interface easier to use as it means every icon can have its own label. Menus are also particularly clear when viewed at this sharpness.
The standby screen doesn't have an active standby option, perhaps because this is the "LE" version of the interface, but you can optionally display a visual guide to the direction pad shortcuts. As with most Nokia phones, in standby mode the direction pad lets you jump straight to a particular function by moving the pad in that direction, which is still a great timesaving feature that no graphical interface can come near in terms of sheer speed.
As with other S40 5th Edition devices, the Nokia 5000 supports themes, and comes with several built into the phone. However, the darker more complex wallpapers are prone to the "3d glasses" effect mentioned above, and it's generally better to stick to the white default background.
Multimedia
The 5000 doesn't have a memory card slot and its internal memory is only 12 megabytes, so there's no possibility of using this as a music phone. However, it does have a built-in music player, which seems rather pointless in these circumstances.
The phone uses MP3 ringtones, and comes with some very nice examples built into it.
There's a voice recorder which is meant for taking brief audio notes.
The main media feature you'll use though is the stereo FM radio, which includes automatic station finding, though it doesn't have preset downloads from Nokia's database that you find on more expensive models. It also doesn't allow recording from the radio as mentioned in some early advertising of the phone (even if it did, the lack of mass storage would make it pointless).
The external mono speaker is very loud but a bit tinny, which is okay for ringtones and casual radio listening.
Camera and Camcorder
The Nokia 5000 has a 1.3 megapixel camera, which is similar to the one on the 5300 or 3110 Classic. (It can also do video at 128x96 pixels with 6 frames per second.) It's not the greatest phone camera in the world, but it's much higher resolution than you get on most other budget models, and okay for casual photography.
However, the lack of a memory card slot and the 12 megabyte internal memory mean you can only take 43 high quality pictures before the phone is full. The phone has Bluetooth so you can transfer them to your PC if you want though.
There's a dedicated camera button on the right side of the phone, so you can hold it horizontally like a normal camera while you take a picture. I forgot to mention the button in the video above, but it is there, and you can see it in one of the photos below (the one with the side of the phone visible).
There's a small round mirror next to the camera lens which is for taking self-portraits: when your face is in the middle of the mirror, it's in the middle of the picture.
The Web & E-Mail
Now, this is where the 5000 is exceptionally strong as a budget phone. It actually has two built-in web browsers: a simple XHTML browser from Nokia, and a much more advanced third party browser called Opera Mini.
The Nokia browser (which is activated by the "Web" icon) is nothing to write home about, it can only really cope with sites designed for mobile phones.
However, the Opera Mini browser is excellent, with the ability to display websites as they would appear on a PC. Its interface is elegant and well designed, with the entire page displayed in a zoomed out mode with a box you can move around to select an area to zoom in on. You can move around the page while you're zoomed in, or press the right soft key to go back to the zoomed out mode. The 5000's QVGA screen makes it work particularly well as you can see more of the page at once.
Opera Mini allows the 5000 to have far better web access than any previous budget phone, and it will probably come as a revelation to people who have never used this kind of phone browser before. It's a taste of the future, and one day very soon it seems even the cheapest phones will have a PC-style web browser built into them.
Opera Mini supports both portrait and landscape views, and it can also be used to view RSS news feeds.
Opera Mini isn't lightning fast, but it's good enough considering this is a budget phone model. It's also a brilliant way of making people's jaws drop when they see what is now possible on a low end phone.
The Nokia 5000 supports POP and IMAP e-mail accounts, with an easy-to-use wizard that helps you set up your account on the phone. (As always, if you're using Gmail remember to switch POP or IMAP on within the Gmail website's settings section before trying to use it on mobile phones.)
Gaming
The 5000 supports Java J2ME games, though as always it's worth remembering that not all Java games run on all Java phones. Compatibility varies tremendously from game to game so check with your game retailer before any purchase.
The six games included with the 5000 are generally excellent, with high quality and a good mixture of genres and styles. Whatever you enjoy in gaming, there's probably something for you in this selection.
I can't guarantee these will be included with all 5000s everywhere, but the 5000 I got (which is a retail model) had the following titles built into it: Backgammon II, Brain Challenge, Bubble Bash, City Bloxx, Platinum Solitaire and Snake III. Of particular note, Brain Challenge and Bubble Bash are both from the famous phone game publisher Gameloft, and make full use of the QVGA screen. City Bloxx is dangerously addictive as always.
GPS and Navigation
No GPS, no navigation.
Other Interesting Stuff
There's nothing particularly to mention in hardware terms, everything is covered above.
Who would like this the most?
Someone who wants a budget phone that looks like a more expensive phone, and/or someone who wants a budget phone with good web browsing capabilities.
Overall
In physical terms the Nokia 5000 is excellent, it's absolutely amazing to see this kind of build quality on a budget model. It feels nice to use, it's very thin and light, and most importantly of all it feels SOLID.
The screen is a mixed blessing: the QVGA resolution makes the interface easier to use and it makes the web browser much more effective, but it also has the potentially very annoying "3d glasses" effect discussed in the review above, especially with dark backgrounds.
Opera Mini allows the 5000 to do things that are totally new to budget phones, and the inclusion of Opera Mini with the phone is a very interesting decision by Nokia. They seem to now want even their cheapest phones to have good web access, which could have profound implications. This policy could revolutionise mobile web access, because the cheapest phones are the ones that most people around the world actually buy. In the developing world, cheap phones may be the only way many people access the internet, which makes it even more significant when cheap phones get high quality browsers.
The one thing you do miss on the 5000 is a memory card slot. It's understandable that Nokia didn't include it as this is a very low price phone, but it's also very frustrating to have a device with a 1.3 megapixel camera and music player which doesn't have mass storage.
Is this a good phone? As a lowest-end budget phone it's extremely good, it's got features you just don't normally see on models in this price range. A lot of people will probably get their first taste of QVGA screens, decent mobile web browsing and megapixel cameras on this model.
As long as you remember what you paid for it, the 5000 won't disappoint.
The Nokia Duck Says: Quack Quack Quack Quack
Photos (click to enlarge):
Technical Details:
Year of Launch: 2008
Weight: 74g
Size: 106mm x 46mm x 11mm
Battery Life: 4.75 hours talk time, 14 days standby time
Phone: Dualband GSM 900/1800 or 850/1900 (supports EDGE)
Screen: 240x320 pixels, 65 thousand colours
Camera: 1.3 megapixel photos, 128x96 6fps video
Memory: 12 megabytes built-in storage space
Connections: Bluetooth, 2.5mm audio jack, handsfree connector, FM radio receiver
Platform: Series 40 5th Edition Feature Pack 1 LE
Software Compatibility: Java J2ME games and applications
Other Notable Features: Very solid build quality
Click here to see the full official Nokia 5000 technical specifications.
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