Customer Reviews

Nokia 5610 XpressMusic Phone, Red (T-Mobile)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I bought it for the camera (3.2 megapixel!) It works well, and saves each picture automatically by default rather than assuming you only want to send it. It is set up to feel like a camera with the shutter button and zoom placed traditionally. The flash is overwhelmingly bright. Time between clicks is slow. Worst part of the camera is that when you take a pic, the image that freezes onscreen is NOT your picture, but the image 1 second before your picture. You never know what you are going to get.
Phone quirks include not reliably locking external keys when the phone is closed (even when set to do it). The main navigation button is hard to master. Up is easy, but getting it to hit "select" instead of down is often hard. Still for a tiny non flip keypad, it is surprisingly easy to use. It only has one alarm, but it works well. The volume is very low, even at the highest setting. It defaults to a very low volume with bluetooth. So EVERY time, I have to access the handset to raise the volume. The voice dial interface is awful. The robotic voice is grating (unlike the motorola one) and it will dial even if it guesses wrong. It's biggest fault is the sound is terrible. There is a lot of static, and the quality is enormously tinny. The speakerphone is almost useless. The best feature other than the camera is the voice memo function, especially when used with a bluetooth headset.

I had a Sony Ericsson Walkman, which I liked, but then it started going into Demo Mode for no reason and I replaced it with the Nokia 5610. So I can provide some comparison of the two phones.

I carry my phone in my pocket so I want something slim and small -- both phones are definately slim and small. The Sony is a little thicker, and they are both about the same height when the Sony is slid open (the Sony is about 1/2 an inch shorter when closed). However, I think I prefer the thinness of the Nokia because it is so thin that I forget it is even in my pocket. The Sony phone also had a tendency to call people at random from being in my pocket and I have never had that problem with the Nokia.

The main reason I bought the phone was to play music. The Sony sounded great, and had a lot of bass. The Nokia also sounds great, but not as much bass as the Sony. The volume on both phones also stops short of what I'd like to set it at -- I think this is a govenment mandate or fear of being sued for damaging ears. (There are aftermarket headphone amps available, but I haven't bought one of those YET). However, what I really like about the Nokia is that it will accept standard headphones, but the Sony requires that you use their proprietary headphones. In Sony's favor, I preferred their software for navigating my music, as it was a lot more intutive. It took me over an hour to figure out how to shuffle the music on the Nokia.

The battery life on both phones seems about the same -- I have to throw it on the charger each evening when I am listening to a lot of music. The battery last 3 or 4 days when I am not listening to music.

I don't use my phone for calls that much, so I use the T-mobile ToGo service. It is $100 for a 1,000 minutes that lasts a year and I normally go 4 to 5 months on 1,000 minutes. I have a suspicion that the unlocked Sony phone didn't like being on the T-mobile network and this was why it was dropping into Demo Memo (just a theory).

Overall I prefer the Nokia, but it is very close.

it looks great, easy to use. but the battery can't stand for so long, it says 300 hours standby time. For me, it only has 3 days standby time ,and i don't have many calls.

I bought Nokia 5610 about 5 months ago after I got tired of Samsung T429. I was looking for a new cell phone which had to have two best qualifications: great camera phone and great graphics. It was esential for me to be able to send high quality pictures. Also, I can't live without playing chess and chess program I had in my old Samsung T-429 had poor graphics and used to freeze up very often while playing.

PICTURE QUALITY with this Nokia is exceptional- I took with it a picture of a local park and you couldn't tell while viewing with Windows gallery on my pc- that the picture was taken with cell phone, not with high quality point-n-shoot camera. I like this feature also: when sending picture, if it takes too many KB's, it allows you automatically to make it smaller. Very minor thing is- it would have been nice for Nokia to put small mirror so one could see himself/herself while taking picture.

GRAPHICS are excellent! Very pleasant to the eye and NEVER freezes up on me while I am playing chess. Never!

PLAYER functionality and sound quality is very good. External buttons are easy to use. When you play a piece of downloaded music from Amazon on loudspeaker- high notes are sometimes too much to handle, but one cannot expect sound quality equal to high end stand alone sound systems; quality through earphones is fine. But overall, music player sound quality, again- is very good. My only complain is that when you play music and press cell phone red end button- music does not stop- you have to press stop/pause button for the player itself, otherwise if you play music and slide down phone or press red stop button or both- music will keep playing and you will have go back to player to stop the music.

CALL QUALITY is also very good. Sound is crisp and clear. The downside, I think, is when you slide up the phone to answer the call and and after the call is over (from either party) phone locks within three seconds and that means when you want to use phone again you have either to slide phone down and up again or press ok and star function. I think it is a mistake by Nokia. I think they should have left the choice to a customer- if they wanted to use the cell phone after the call- let them do so, if they wanted to lock- let them just slide it down. I'd say it is a medium grade anoyance.

LOUDSPEAKER is good, but not excelent. Samsung T429 had a slight advantage here.

APPEARANCE is superb. I am a slider cell phone guy and this one looks so so cool! It feels solid and well built, not a flimsy piece of plastic like so many other cell phones. Combination of red and black colors are blended very well and beautiful to look at. And those two 1mm high and 3mm wide lights at the mid-lower part of the front of the phone that come up slowly and then goes away slowly- it is so cool especially at night.

OVERALL i would definitely recommend to anyone especially who is looking for exceptional graphics, ability to take and send highest quality pictures. 5 stars. Definitely.

I love that I can store a lot of music on it, as I mainly use it during my commute. I don't talk on my cell phone a lot, text or surf the web. I don't think it would be the easiest to use in that sense. I like the camera a lot. Good quality pixs. Video picture as well. Nice weight to it, but I always feel scared I'm going to break it when I slide it open, but after a month of using it, I see it is sturdy. The buttons make it a bit difficult to navigate. but the volume button for the music are well placed. In general, a great music phone, not great for texting or email
it is capable but not a full qwerty keypad

I am die-hard fan of Nokia and have used atleast 4 different Nokia phones. Even though I don't like this phone, i will continue to use Nokia.
There are some good points abt this phone too.
Pros:
1. Very sleak, stylish, light-weight,
2. Bright colorful screen
3. works great as a music player.
4. Video/LCD quality is very good.

Now the Cons:
1. Biggest disappointment was Very low volume with or without speaker. Impossible to use this phone in car, train, malls or any crowded or noisy places.
2. Battery life: I get 2-3 days with minimal talk time. I could have still lived with that but the battery indicator lets u beleive that it has more battery life than it actually has. (especially the second half).
3. Down select key has become very hard with 2 months of moderate use, It needs to pressed very hard now, i am pretty sure it is not going to last that long.
4. Very minor flaw: Phone is very slippery. it has no grip. Its all plastic uniform smooth silky body. I find myself dropping this phone a lot more often.
5. Software of Nokia to transfer phonebook sucks badly. It was much easier to transfer the numbers using sim card.

I have a very basic blackberry phone also and I find myself using that phone over this one all the time.

Overall: I would not recomend this Phone. It has some good points but not the ones i care about.

I have two of these phones. One works just fine. The other has died six times. After replacing the SIMM card, the micro SD card, the battery, and the entire phone, the only explanation is that one of the mp3 music files is causing the phone's software to hang. But the phone doesn't die while playing any particular song, and it has even died while turned off. It took three dead phones before Nokia customer support quit dismissing a music software glitch might be the problem acknowledged that memory leakage could be killing the phone. But they said their tech support guys are incapable of locating and fixing a problem like that. So the "solution" is that my daughter can't put any of 200+ mp3 files back on her phone, because one of them is causing it to fail. (All these music files play just fine on a Sansa mp3 player.) T-Mobile was quite good about replacing the dead phone with a new one, but that didn't solve the problem, and that's all Nokia is willing to do. (At least the third time I had to send it in to Nokia technical support for the same unfixed problem Nokia agreed to pay the $10 shipping fee.) I bought this phone on December 18, and on March 20 I'm preparing to send the sixth dead phone back to Nokia. Two weeks from now I'll have a partially working cell phone again.

So the bottom line is that it's a good phone if it works with your mp3 files, but if for any reason it doesn't, Nokia isn't going to fix the problem.

I bought this product to replace my Motorola v360 after 2 years of good use. I wanted a phone that has similar functions but with FM. I was disappointed with the handsfree headset. It still had the 2.5 mm input plug but now as an extension to a 3.5 headset which also serves as a microphone. I hope they kept the microphone on the extension so I can use a better 3.5 mm headset that stays in my ear. I guess I have to buy bluetooth now. The keypad is small. It has synchronization of Tel# to the t-mobile server but I don't know how secure it is. The phone address book can carry 3 numbers per entryname but if you move it to the sim, it will split the numbers each into an entry e.g. name, name1, name2. Overall, the phone is good for what it is meant for, a multimedia player/recorder.

There's no denying that this phone is loaded with features. Awesome camera, music player and a sleek appearance. I only wish that it was sturdier and had more thought put into its design .

I've had this phone for less than 6 months and have already had to replace the slide bar. At first I chalked it up to clumsiness, but days after replacing it I noticed the new bar cracking in the same place. Seems to me like a manufacturer's flaw (very similar to the Sony ericsson's cracking buttons).

I can't understand why the makers would put such a flimsy button on a part of the phone that gets the most pressure. I'm thinking of just waiting and getting a new phone rather than dumping my money into repeatedly repairing this one.

I like the phone and features, just wish it was a flip phone, the screen gets too dirty.