Review: Nokia 5300
Browsing
T-Mobile's T-Zones Web portal can be accessed with the right soft key from the home screen or in the main menu. Either way brings you to T-Mobile's home page, which is basically a variety of ways for you to spend money purchasing services. You can also jump into T-Mobile's basic information services or perform searches.
The portal ditches all graphics and presents you with just text options. While this may not be the sexiest way to browse the Internet, it makes pages load faster and lets you find what you want and move on much quicker than if you were waiting for images to download. One nice touch is that a Google search bar is at the top of the portal.
You can also use the options menu and browse directly to the open Internet. Sites that have mobile WAP versions will work without issue. The 5300 cannot browse on standard HTML web pages.
The EDGE data speeds were fairly snappy with WAP sites, but were not as quick as some other EDGE-equipped phones we have used. Page-loading times ranged from several seconds to more than a minute. The experience was uneven in many different areas with T-Mobile coverage.
Customize
With Series 40, its more a question of what you can't customize, rather than what you can. Almost every screen or view or menu on the phone can be altered. The home screen can be set to display the T-Mobile MyFaves icons, or it can have a Windows Mobile-like "Today" screen - complete with calendar appointments, notes and other things displayed, and an abbreviated menu scrollbar across the top.
The main menu screen can also have a tabbed view, similar in theory to the Verizon Wireless UI. The same list of 9 main menu items appear across the top of the screen. When you scroll through them sideways, the tabs open up a set of options for each menu. For example, if you scroll to the message tab, it will list "Create Message", "Inbox", etc.
The number of ringtones with which you can customize was a little disappointing. There are only 7 actual ringtones on the 5300, and 5 of them are song clips ("Jazzy Piano") rather than actual rings. The 2 rings are the standard Nokia tune and T-Mobile's do-do-do-DE-do sound from its commercials. If you want more variety you can purchase new ringtones or use any song from your music library as a ringtone. There are 18 alert sounds, which let you assign different notifications for different actions.
Really, we could go on and on. Rest assured, if you don't like the way something looks or acts on the 5300, you can probably change it.
File Management
Because the 5300 can be used as a USB storage device, the menu system allows you to access and move files around. The files are automatically sorted by type into the appropriate folders ("pictures", "music"). The menu system is not complicated, and there is generally more than one way to reach all the different folders.
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Nokia 5300
