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By Damian Koh
Jun 11, 2007

Most cell phones these days are capable of playing music. Even a barebones music player will do the most common music formats. For most people, Sony Ericsson's Walkman series may be the first to mind when they're looking for a musically talented handset, but Nokia has come a long way, too, with its multimedia-enabled N-series handhelds. Then again, not everyone will need a "multimedia computer". So there's the XpressMusic range to cater to this music-loving crowd.

Design
There's nothing cutting edge about the design of the Nokia 5700 XpressMusic. It does stand out, but not because it's an ultraslim model. We have to qualify that the 5700 isn't chunky. It has a nice heft in hand and against our ear. It's like you can actually feel you're holding something substantial in your hands, but not to the extent that it's heavy or bulky. In short, it's a nice balance of size and weight.

To set it apart from the competition, the 5700 offers a 270-degree twist motion on the bottom half of the device where the numeric keypad is. A 90-degree twist (either toward or away from you) will activate the camera, while a 180-degree turn will activate the music player and, along with it, dedicated external multimedia keys for playback, pause, fast forward and rewind. The keypad itself has large buttons providing tactile feedback that we've come to adore.

The 5700 offers a 270-degree twist motion on the bottom half of the device where the numeric keypad is.

It's amusing to see how some of our friends' faces lit up when they thought we were attempting to break the phone by doing the whole twisting motion. But the really useful part of this design is we don't actually have to dive into the phone's menu to activate the camera or music player, which saves us a few clicks.

However, the design is not without flaws. For instance, in camera mode, we have to use the joystick to navigate the shooting options. With the keypad forming a right-angle with the top half of the phone, it can get rather cramped when reaching for the joystick. Switching between the applications isn't instantaneous. No fault with that since it's the same if we were to activate the programs via the phone menu as well.

There's another thing which we want to point out on this Nokia. Because the Menu and Cancel keys are on the rubberized edges of the phone flanking the 2.2-inch QVGA LCD, the buttons won't light up like the rest of the keypad. For example, if you're typing a message in the dark and need to cancel some misspelt characters, you will be feeling for the key instead of knowing exactly where it is.

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