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Review: Nokia 5230 Nuron

The last S60 5th Edition phone we reviewed was the N97. The Nuron has been slightly T-Mobile-ized, and makes changes to some of the basic features of S60 5th Edition. T-Mobile decided to ax the basic S60 5th Edition home screen, which is normally filled with widgets that let users access all sorts of different content from the home screen. Instead, the default theme is the standard S60 3rd Edition layout, with the shortcut list at the top of the screen, and four permanent software buttons along the bottom of the screen.

If you want to access the main menu, press the physical menu button on the front face of the phone. Press and hold the menu key to see a list of apps that are running. The main menu can be laid out in grid or list fashion, and users can rearrange the location of all the icons in the menu. One thing I really like is that S60 5th Edition feels flatter than S60 3rd Edition. In other words, you don't have to dig and dig through multiple folders to find things.

The one baffling thing that Nokia has done is to necessitate double-tapping in many of the menus. Because it isn't deployed uniformly across the entire OS, it takes a bit of time to learn which menus and actions need to be double-tapped rather than tapped once. My word to describe this would be: annoying.

The Nuron is noticeably faster in basic performance than the N97 was. Menus open swiftly, screen transitions are snappy, and I didn't notice any lag. This made the overall experience much better. The phone also asks permission *slightly* less than it used to. S60 was notorious for constantly asking the user to confirm selections. I noticed less of this with the Nuron, and that's a good thing.

By flattening the menu structure and making things easier to find, most users should have no problem adjusting to S60 5th Edition, especially those who are familiar with S60.

Next page: Calls/Contacts

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Nokia 5230 Nuron

3.2" display 360 x 640 pixels
ARM 11 processor
1,320 mAh battery
Memory Card Slot, Headphone Jack (3.5mm)

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