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Nokia has pulled the sheet off its newest touch-screen phone, scheduled to arrive in the fourth quarter: the Nokia 5230.
The 5230 might be viewed as the more affordable sibling of the 5800 XpressMusic-which was said to be Nokia’s iPhone challenger before the flagship N97 came along.
The 5230 synchronizes with Windows Media Player 11, the Nokia Music Store and Nokia Music for PC; supports all popular digital music formats; has a 3.5mm audio connector; and promises a playback time of up to 33 hours. Bluetooth 2.0 is on board, along with 70MB of internal memory and a microSD slot for adding 16GB more.
There’s also a 3.2-inch touch-screen that’s 640 by 360 pixels and offers handwriting recognition plus an on-screen QWERTY keyboard. A Media Bar offers quick access to favorite apps, such as YouTube and Facebook, as well as to music, photos and Ovi Share, and a Contacts Bar includes images and quick connections to up to 20 friends.
The 5230 weighs 4 ounces, measures 4.3 by 2 by 0.57 inches, and supports WCDMA 2100/900, 1900/850 and 2100/850 networks, plus their corresponding GSM/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 bands. There are USB 2.0 and microSB slots, plus AGPS and Ovi Maps for driving and walking directions-should users want to connect with friends face to face.
The business of the 5230’s price point, however-currently it’s priced at 259 euros (or $371) with Nokia’s Comes With Music Service, or 149 euros ($213) without-comes partly at the expense of Wi-Fi connectivity, which isn’t included, and the camera, which is only 2 megapixels.
“Competitively prices at 149 euro, we believe the Nokia 5230 is an unbeatable offer for many new customers who aspire a device that stars in music, mingles with social networks from Facebook to MySpace, navigates you to where it happens, when it happens, and comes in an array of dazzling colors,” said Nokia Vice President Jo Harlow, in a statement.
The color choices, agreed, are rather dazzling. In a nod to the 5230 being intended for the young-and-cool set, it comes in red, pink, blue, yellow, silver and dark silver.