Nokia 5630 XpressMusic

The XpressMusic family has walked a long way – and shed a great deal of weight – since the 5700. The music-centric Finns have always felt at home on Symbian ground though, and the Nokia 5630 is the next step for them and they’re getting smarter and faster. A sharp mind in a fit body, the latest XpressMusic smartphone packs the quickest processor Nokia have offered to date.

Nokia 5630 XpressMusic official photos

XpressMusic is not the Nokia 5630’s only virtue. The subdued exterior reveals little of the talent that lays beneath. Along with the music perks go Wi-Fi, a 3-megapixel snapper, N-Gage support, and S60 FP2 to open the door to a whole world of extra apps.

Of course, it’s not without its flaws but think again before casting the first stone. The 5630 XpressMusic is slim enough – both in girth and price – to dodge its critics.

Key features:

• ARM 11 600 MHz processor
• Quad-band GSM support
• 3G with HSDPA
• 12 mm slim
• 2.2" 16M-color QVGA display of excellent sunlight legibility
• 3 megapixel camera, enhanced fixed focus and dual LED flash
• VGA video-call camera
• Symbian OS with S60 3.2 UI
• Stereo FM radio with RDS
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g with UPnP technology
• Bluetooth (with A2DP) and microUSB port
• microSD card slot (16 GB supported, 4GB included)
• Standard 3.5mm audio jack
• Dedicated music keys
• N-Gage support
• Ovi Contacts integration
• Contacts bar on the homescreen
• N-Series-like gallery
• Carrying pouch supplied
• Text-to-speech Message reader system application

Main disadvantages:

• Cheap plastic build
• microSD card very hard to eject
• Screen is on the small side for comfortable web browsing or video watching and has inaccurate color reproduction
• Camera has no autofocus and tends to oversharpen images
• Video recording quality is poor and the framerate – low

We quite like the nice little twist the Nokia 5630 XpressMusic brings in terms of looks and substance. Behind its youthful and playful disguise, there is indeed a power smartphone (along the lines of Nokia E52) to meet all your media and connectivity needs.

Nokia 5630 XpressMusic live shots

The Nokia 5630 is quite reminiscent of the super slim 5310 XpressMusic. It doesn’t have the flashy aluminum accents but the added power and S60 make it a real workhorse. And having in mind it’s a smartphone – and a powerful one too – it makes the slim waistline even more impressive.

A couple of slim XpressMusic candybars

So, now that we’ve got you tuned in to the Nokia 5630 XpressMusic, we guess you might be eager to see it in action. Let’s roll.

Unboxing the Nokia 5630 XpressMusic

The retail package of the Nokia 5630 XpressMusic has all you need to get your Nokia 5630 XpressMusic going. There is a microUSB charger, a peculiarly short data cable, and a set of stereo headphones on a detachable remote. The 860 mAh battery is there as well, while a manual and a mini DVD with software and product information round out the contents.

The bonus tracks include a 4GB microSD card and a soft carrying pouch. What more could you want?

Nokia 5630 Xpress Music unboxed

Nokia 5630 XpressMusic 360-degree spin

The Nokia 5630 Xpress Music measures 112 x 46 x 12 mm and weighs a mere 83 g. Slim and lightweight, the phone sticks to the palm and is reasonably comfortable to navigate. Is it pocketable? Given its size and weight, that really goes without saying.

Design and construction

The Nokia 5630 XpressMusic is thin, light and ready to play. There are three color versions hitting the stores – red on black, blue on grey and chrome on grey, and all of them look fresh and appealing.

The earpiece is centrally placed right next to the secondary VGA video-call camera and the ambient light sensor.

Earpiece, video-call camera and ambient light sensor above the display

The display of the 5630 XpressMusic is among the Nokia’s finest in terms of both contrast and color rendering, and it has an impressively wide viewing angle.

The QVGA screen can display up to 16M colors on a 2.2" diagonal. Sunlight legibility is an absolute treat and a Nokia trademark.

The main grudge we may have here is with the smallish size. The color reproduction also seems a bit off, with a distinct bluish tint visible. That gives the photos displayed on the 5630 somewhat unpleasant cold looks.

A decently-sized display

Beneath the screen, on each side of the D-pad there are three raised areas accommodating the soft keys, the Menu and Clear buttons, and the Call and End/Power buttons. All controls are comfortable to use and occasional mispresses are unlikely to be an issue.

The buttons below the display are comfortable

The old-school-matrix-like dotted symbols on the numberpad are quite unusual but still readable. The buttons themselves are smallish but quite tactile and solid to press. The mouthpiece is placed between the “0” and the hash key.

The Nokia 5630 XpressMusic buttons are small but comfortable

The display backlighting and the white keypad illumination are very strong and even and make the handset a pleasure to use in the dark.

The strong and even white backlighting is quite helpful

The top side of the Nokia 5630 XpressMusic hosts the 3.5mm audio jack and the microUSB port. There’s a small status LED up there too that lights up when the phone connects to a computer or is charging.

The top side of Nokia 5630 XpressMusic

On the left are the standard music player controls, typical of the XpressMusic lineup. They are thin and tactile feedback is not the best, but it’s nothing major. The symbols above the keys glow white in the dark.

Also on the left is the lanyard eyelet.

Music player keys are on the left * the lanyard eyelet is also here

The right side of Nokia 5630 XpressMusic is quite crowded. Here you’ll find the volume rocker and shutter key along with the microSD card slot. The latter has a small protective cap. It is quite hard to pull the microSD card out using your fingers only since the card sinks too deep into the slot and is very difficult to reach. We guess you’d ned a tool every time you want to take it out.

What we said on the comfort of use of the three music player keys goes the same for the controls on the right as well. The volume rocker and the shutter key are just a bit too stiff.

The right side of 5630 XpressMusic: volume rocker, microSD slot and camera key

The microSD slot is said to support cards of up to 16GB, and this was as far as we went testing it. The handset even handled a full 16GB microSD card trouble-free.

The bottom part of the 5630 XpressMusic is pretty bare – there are no buttons or ports to see here.

The Nokia 5630 XpressMusic bottom

We conclude our round-trip of the 5630 XpressMusic with the rear. The thin plastic battery cover features a dual LED flash right under the 3-megapixel camera lens. On the other end is the loudspeaker grill. Unfortunately, the Nokia 5630 doesn’t have stereo speakers in its arsenal. You can see how the loudspeaker performs in our dedicated test in the Telephony part of this review.

The plastic rear: camera lens with LED flash

Releasing the battery cover reveals the 860 mAh Li-Ion (BL-4CT) battery and the SIM compartment. The SIM card compartment is housed under a hinged metal bracket and swapping it in is quick and easy.

A look under the battery cover: battery and SIM card slot

The Nokia 5630 XpressMusic feels solidly built and we didn’t notice any rattles or creaks while reviewing the phone. The plastic looks a bit on the cheapish side, though the 5630 XpressMusic may be excused for this given the low price it’s going for. Having a lot of metal would have also increased the weight.

The phone’s front tends to collect a few fingerprints but it isn’t such a big deal. The back, on the other hand, is absolutely fingerprint-proof.

The slim Nokia 5630 XpressMusic handles nicely

S60 3.2 UI: Homescreen redesigned

The Nokia 5630 runs on the Symbian 9.3 OS with S60 3rd Edition user interface. It has Feature Pack 2 but there have been changes since its previous incarnations.

The biggest (and best) change is the Contacts bar option for the standby screen. It is similar to the typical Active standby screen but things have been reordered and as the name suggests - a bar with contacts has been added.

The top of the screen is a bar with favorite contacts - each represented by the contact photo and their first name - and it's possible to have three contacts visible at a time though the list allows for scrolling left or right.

For each contact you can add an RSS feed, so we guess a nice trick is to add a contact that isn't a person just so that you'll have quick access to your favorite feeds from the homescreen.

Selecting a contact from the Contact bar brings up a screen with info on the contact (a different one than you get if you select the contact from the Contacts list). It has the contact photo, name and phone number. Under that are four buttons - call, send message, update feed and settings.

Bellow that is an area that shows the communications history for that contact - both calls and messages. And finally, at the bottom there are the top two lines from the RSS feed.

The new Contacts bar • viewing a contact from the Contacts bar

Under the Contacts list, it's pretty much standard Active Standby. First up is info on the email account showing the number of unread messages and sender and Re: fields of the most recent message. Under it is the status and number of friends online for Ovi Contacts, which gets replaced by song info if the music player is running. At the bottom is the shortcuts tab.

The old Active Standby layouts are still here and include Basic - you can assign shortcuts to the D-pad, Horizontal icons bar - the old Active Standby and, finally, the Vertical icons bar, which has only tabs (shortcuts, calendar, music player and personalization) but doesn't hide much of the wallpaper.

Basic • Horizontal icon bar • Vertical icon bar

Finally, the S60 UI Feature Pack 2 brings some graphical improvements as well, such as animations when browsing the menus.

The task manager has also received a face-lift and now appears on every pop-up menu. It's actually placed on top of every list, which can be a little irritating at times. Alternatively, you can still use the well-known shortcut of pressing and holding the menu key to bring up the task manager.

The embedded 128MB of RAM are an important factor for OS performance. In Symbian terms 128MB is virtually impossible to deplete even with several applications running in the background. You shouldn't expect any memory full warnings on your Nokia 5630 XpressMusic.

The 600 MHz ARM 11 CPU is lightning fast and is the speediest you'll find in a mid-range Symbian. Navigating the menus is quick with an instant response to user commands. The blue circle next to the icon of a running application is a well known Symbian indication reminding users to quit unwanted applications that are still running in the background.

As with all Symbian phones, there is a built-in voice recognition system. It does a good job, being fully speaker-independent and recognizing a fairly high percentage of our commands.

Telephony

Signal reception is great on the Nokia 5630. The phone has commendable speaker quality and the sound during calls is clear and free of any interference. Vibration is also strong enough to make sure you never miss an incoming call or message.

Calling Dexter on the Nokia 5630

The results from our loudspeaker test are at your disposal - Nokia 5630 XpressMusic turned out to be a good performer in this respect. Check out the table showing how it stacks up beside some of the handsets we've put to the same test. In case you want to find out more about the test itself or a complete list of tested devices, hit the link.

Speakerphone test	Voice, dB	Pink noise/ Music, dB	Ringing phone, dB	Overall score
Apple iPhone 3G	66.1	62.1	71.7	Below Average
Nokia 5630 XpressMusic	68.6	65.7	76.0	Good
Nokia 5800 XpressMusic	75.7	66.5	68.5	Good
LG KM900 Arena	70.9	68.2	78.3	Good
Nokia 5320 XpressMusic	74.3	66.6	78.3	Very Good
Samsung M7600 Beat DJ	75.7	75.7	77.8	Excellent

Phonebook is robust

The Symbian handsets have an excellent phonebook with virtually unlimited capabilities. There is storage space for a practically unlimited number of contacts and fields with all the available memory potentially usable for the purpose. Contacts can be freely ordered by first or last name and can naturally be searched by gradual typing of any of the names.

Contacts list • searching by gradual typing • viewing contact details

Editing a contact offers a great variety of preset fields and you can replicate each of them as many times as you like. You can also create new fields if you happen to be able to think of one. We personally find it quite a challenge to think of something Nokia has missed here - there's everything from the contact's nickname to their assistant's name and phone number.

Personal ringtones and videos can also be assigned to a contact. If you prefer you may group your contacts and give each group a specific ringtone.

An enormous variety of fields is available when editing a contact

Synchronization is also nice and easy although you do need the Nokia PC suite (or Ovi Suite as of lately) for things to go smoothly. Sending and receiving contacts via SMS or Bluetooth is also a piece of cake.

The Call log application is another Nokia 5630 strength. It holds up to 20 call records in each of the tabs for outgoing, received and missed calls. These are all accessed by pressing the Call key on the homescreen.

The call log is there to keep track of your communications

If you enter the Log application from the main menu, you'll see a detailed list of all your network communications for the past 30 days. These include messages, calls and data transfers over the air or even over Wi-Fi. The period can be shortened to save some space but you are quite unlikely to do that, as even with a huge number of calls the log only takes a few miserly kilobytes of memory space.

Messaging and Ovi Contacts

Texting with Nokia 5630 is spot on. With a decent keypad and great software support your correspondence is as good as it gets on this kind of devices. Let's face it, Nokia are targeting the youth with this handset and solid messaging is key for them.

The Nokia 5630 supports all common message types - SMS, MMS and email. The SMS and MMS share an editor. It is the well known intuitive application from previous Symbian S60 smartphones. It has a counter of characters left up to a limit of 160. There is also an indicator in brackets showing the number of separate parts the message will be divided into for sending.

Turning an SMS into MMS is as simple as adding any multimedia content

It goes without saying that you can activate a delivery report for messages. The reports pop up on the standby screen and are subsequently saved in a separate folder in the messaging sub-menu. If you exit the message editor without having sent the message, the editor prompts you to either save it to the Drafts folder or to discard it.

All it takes to convert a common SMS into an MMS is to insert some multimedia content. A nice feature allows the resizing of pictures automatically for sending via MMS.

The Nokia 5630 also features a dedicated audio message editor. Although technically a type of MMS, the audio messages have their own separate editor. You can either record the message on the spot or use a previously recorded sound clip.

The audio message editor has questionable applicability

The email client is also very similar to what previous Symbian powered phones have offered. If you are using any public email service (it has to be among the over 1000 supported providers), all you have to do is enter your email address and password to start sending and receiving emails. The Nokia 5630 takes care of downloading all the relevant settings to get you going in no time.

The client can download headers only or entire messages, and can be set to automatically check mail at a given interval. There is also support for attachments, signatures and basically most of the things you can think of, so the Nokia 5630 can meet almost any requirement regarding the user's emailing needs. Thanks to QuickOffice, viewing attached Microsoft Office files is a breeze.

The email client

There's also the option to listen to the email - the Message reader app comes with one language and two voices preinstalled (one male and one female) and the option to download more. The application handles this quite nicely and while the voice didn't sound too natural, it didn't trip over difficult words and even managed to read URLs.

Listening to an email • speech settings

Ovi Contacts come preinstalled with Nokia 5630 XpressMusic but you can also install it on most other Nokia smartphones. Ovi contacts integrates tightly with the Contacts list as a new tab and offers an IM client with a twist. You can search for people already registered with Ovi or send an invitation to anybody using Gmail since the Ovi contacts supports G-Talk, Google's own IM, as well.

Ovi Contacts is a very capable IM client

Thanks to this service you will be able to chat in real time with all your Ovi/Google Talk-connected contacts, change your status messages and mood, and all that kind of social networking stuff.

In addition you can even go as far as sharing your GPS location so your friends can view immediately where you are at that particular moment using the Ovi Maps. Or you can share the name and the artist of the track you are currently listening to.

What can we say - it all works exactly as advertized. Your contacts need not have an Ovi-connected phone, they can chat with you just fine over Google Talk.

XpressMusic player is not spectacular

The XpressMusic branding raises the bar high for the Nokia 5630 music player. While it's pretty good, it's by no means exceptional: just on a par with other recent Symbian devices. It has a huge number of supported audio formats, including MP3, AAC, eAAC+ and WMA but little to top the business-oriented Nokia E71 for example.

However, the dedicated music keys on the side and the new active standby layout, where the music player is one click away, are things that enhance the sonic experience. Quite naturally, the player can also be minimized to play in background. In this case a tab replaces the Ovi Contacts tab on the stand-by screen and indicates the currently running track.

The music player "Now playing" interface • song info on the homescreen

Sorting your songs by artist, album, genre and composer is automatic and searching tracks by gradual typing of the desired name is also available. Tracks are transferred to Nokia 5630 via Bluetooth, USB or by simple download. You can also use a card reader for that purpose and transfer them directly to your memory card.

Searching the music library

Upon completing a USB transfer, or inserting a card, the phone automatically prompts to scan for new music tracks and, if allowed to do so, adds the new ones to the music library. The player comes with five equalizer presets and, should they seem insufficient, you can edit them or create new ones in a matter of seconds.

Six equalizer presets are available • creating a new one

Nokia 5630 XpressMusic also features an innovative feature called Say and Play. By using the phone's built-in speaker independent voice recognition, it allows you to play any stored track by simply saying its title or artist.

The Nokia Say and Play feature currently supports English and the pre-installed UI languages. However it should be able to pick up titles in any languages if they are pronounced in an English manner or with UI language pronunciation.

To search the tracks, the Say and Play features uses the metadata embedded into the tracks. If no metadata is stored, the handset will create ones based on the filename.

Very good audio quality

The audio quality of Nokia 5630 is pretty good as one might expect from a handset, titled XpressMusic. Except for the slightly high total harmonic distortion and intermodulation distortion, all the readings are excellent.

The noise level and dynamic range of Nokia 5130 XpressMusic are excellent, easily rivaling dedicated music players. As you can see from the table it even outscore the Apple's iPhone 3GS on those and that is about as good as we have managed to test. The same hold true for the stereo crosstalk.

The frequency response of the Nokia 5130 is simply great, remaining within 0.26 of the perfect line throughout the range.

Test	Frequency response	Noise level	Dynamic range	THD	IMD + Noise	Stereo crosstalk
Nokia 5630 XpressMusic	+0.13, -0.26	-94.0	94.8	0.466	0.876	-97.3
Nokia 5130 XpressMusic	+0.04, -0.16	-89.9	89.0	0.0033	0.014	-83.6
Nokia 5310 XpressMusic	+0.29, -1.69	-94.4	92.0	0.015	0.491	-73.8
Nokia 5220 XpressMusic	+0.29, -1.64	-91.7	90.3	0.012	0.612	-73.1
Nokia N85	+0.28, -1.19	-94.4	95.4	0.305	0.701	-88.1
Nokia N96	+0.52, -2.14	-90.6	90.7	0.016	0.364	-73.5
Nokia 5800 XpressMusic	+0.09, -0.77	-92.2	92.1	0.013	0.297	-75.0
Apple iPod Touch 2G	+0.04, -0.05	-91.4	91.5	0.0027	0.012	-90.0
Apple iPhone 3GS	+0.01, -0.05	-92.1	92.1	0.0035	0.011	-95.0

Nokia 5630 XpressMusic vs Apple iPhone 3G S frequency response graphs

You can learn more about the whole testing process here.

Video player is good enough

Nokia 5630 features Real player for playing your video clips and the video player can be displayed in both normal and fullscreen modes. When in full screen, the softkey functions are hidden so that they don't spoil the viewing experience and only pop up when a key is pressed.

With such a small screen though, video playback is not this phone's strongest suit. And to confirm that, if you want DivX/XviD playback you'll need to install a third-party player.

FM radio with RDS and Internet Radio

The FM radio on Nokia 5630 has a nice simple interface and can automatically scan and save the available stations in your area. RDS support is included and the Visual radio is also on-board. If internet connection is available, the Visual radio application can download all the local stations and save them to the handset with their names.

FM radio and internet radio are available

Should you ever get bored of local radio stations and are in range of a Wi-Fi network, Nokia 5630 offers Internet radio with an extensive directory of stations and the option to save the best in Favorites.

You can stream stations over 3G or even GPRS with separate settings for the audio quality, but it's probably not worth it. Searching for stations can be done by name, genre, language or country or if you can't find what you're looking for you can always add a station manually.

Nseries-grade image gallery

The image gallery was a pleasant surprise - it's the same as the one found in Nokia's N-Series phones and looks great. The speed of photo browsing increases if you press and hold the direction buttons on the D-pad. This allows quick skipping of tons of files if you're not in the habit of sorting out your memory card regularly.

Browsing the image gallery

Unlike, say, the Nokia N85, zooming here is very speedy, thanks to the zippy 600MHz processor. It does slow down a bit when you get over 100% but it will go up to 400% zoom. Zooming is done in small increments (about 10%) and panning is quite fast too.

The gallery offers a nice slide show with customizable effects and delay between slides. You can also choose the direction of the slideshow - forward or backward from the currently selected photo and the track to go with it. Music can also be switched off if you prefer.

The gallery also has a very good picture tagging system. In addition to geotagging, which is automatically handled by the camera, you can add as many tags as you like to each photo and then use them as filters. There's also the option to organize photos in Albums.

Zooming in • you can add tags to photos

Camera is alright, video - not

The Nokia 5630 is equipped with a 3 megapixel camera with a maximum image resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels. It sports a dual-LED flash but no lens protection whatsoever. This means that the glass covering the lens is prone to finger smudges. It doesn't have autofocus, instead it relies on the so called enhanced fixed focus.

Camera interface

As far as settings go, the camera on 5630 XpressMusic is limited, although it offers several scene presets, one of which is user defined. There's limited control over light sensitivity (it has low, medium, high and auto settings) as well as some control over sharpness and contrast. On the right side of the screen, there's a bar with shortcuts for some settings. You can add and remove shortcuts so you can have quick access to the settings you need.

The rest of the settings include flash control, self-timer (2, 10, 20 seconds), night mode, automatic panorama mode and multi shot. Multi shot captures consecutive images one after another (6 images or - if you hold down the shutter key - until you release the key or the memory runs out). After that you can pick which images to keep.

There's also an option to capture consecutive images separated by a predefined interval (from 10 seconds to 30 minutes). Color effects (sepia, negative, black and white, vivid) can also be enabled.

Image quality

The image quality is good overall, with decent levels of detail for a 3MP shooter. There's little noise in well lit areas and the contrast is good. The color rendering is accurate; however the sharpening algorithm gets overzealous, which results in artifacts.

Nokia 5630 XpressMusic camera samples

The Nokia 5630 XpressMusic is the first Nokia handset to feature the enhanced fixed focus, which was introduced by Nokia at this year's MWC in February. The handsets with enhanced fixed focus are supposed to be able to shoot from closer distance than the regular phones.

We tried shooting with the 2 megapixel Nokia 6500 classic just for focus comparison's sake. As it turned out, the technology is not that much of an improvement. Take a look at the comparative test shots. They are both taken form 30 cm distance. Any closer than that and the phones failed to achieve acceptable focus. By the way, the iPhone 3G produces pretty much the same results from this distance, but we are not including it in this test.

Nokia 5630 XpressMusic • Nokia 6500 classic

As for video recording, the camera shoots in VGA resolution at 15 fps captured in MPEG-4 format. Although this is a decent achievement, the quality is quite poor actually. The modest frame-rate takes the fun out of the higher VGA resolution and makes the videos unsuitable for viewing on a larger screen.

Synthetic resolution

Finally it comes the time for our studio resolution chart. This is a standard ISO12233 chart used for evaluating the synthetic resolution of digital cameras. It is an excellent tool for measuring pure horizontal and vertical resolution and also offers a good reference point for comparison of resolution between cameras.

The long parallel lines serve as good measurement of resolved resolution. The point where the lines are no longer clearly separated is where the resolution resolved by the camera maxes out. There's a number scale alongside so you can even set a number corresponding to the camera's performance.

The several different line sets are taken from various places across the frame so you also have a nice representation how the image resolution changes as you go towards the edges of the frame (poor optics are far blurry towards the frame ends than in the frame center).

We also have some grey and color test charts stuck on there - those show how the noise suppressing algorithm affects the various colors (usually different) and how the algorithm affects the detail in the shadows. Usually with a poor camera you can't distinguish any difference in the shades of black, while in reality there is some.

Meanwhile the thin lines at the top of both the color chart and the gray scale illustrate the real-life effect of the noise reduction. You will notice that the numbers are barely readable with some phones and more easily recognizable with others.

Here's a comparison of the camera on the 5630 XpressMusic and the one on the iPhone 3GS. They perform about equally, as might be expected (both are 3MP snappers). The iPhone 3GS has a really small edge in resolved resolution. The noise suppression algorithm on the Nokia is too aggressive, resulting in cleaner but more processed-looking photos. Also there's a strange blue fringing visible on the 5630 photos, which is too hinting of imperfect processing.

Nokia 5630 resolution chart photo • 100% crops

Apple iPhone 3GS resolution chart photo • 100% crops

All-round connectivity

Data transfer options are numerous on the Nokia 5630. Every common network data transfer medium is supported and so are USB 2.0 and Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP. HSDPA support goes up to 10.2Mbps and HSUPA is also here at 2Mbps. Nokia 5630 also has Wi-Fi capabilities to really sweeten the deal.

There is also a card slot so if you have a card reader lying around you can transfer the data directly to your memory card. The card is accessible from a slot on the right side, but it's too deep and getting to it can be quite a challenge.

Such a good browser deserves a bigger screen

Browsing the internet with the Nokia 5630, like with all Nokia smartphones, is a pleasant experience. Even the most elaborate pages are rendered well and finding your way around them is a piece of cake.

The virtual mouse cursor earns the browser another point as it is easy to control and generally works great. A mini-map can be activated to help you find your way around large sites where lots of scrolling is required. The zoom level is also easily adjustable and searching for text on a page is easy.

The large amount of RAM is surely one of the best things that could happen to the browser, as it is clearly one of the most RAM-intensive applications. Now, even if you load very heavy web pages and have a few applications running in the background, you are extremely unlikely to run out of RAM.

The very good web browser downed by the small display

The web browser also has full support for flash and java content so you should have no problem watching content found on the Internet. If you're watching a video on YouTube for example you can click on the video and view it fullscreen. That doesn't always work as some sites use clicking on the video for play/pause but the option is accessible from the menu. That option is needed as videos generally are too big to fit in the QVGA display, which a real shame.

YouTube video playing in the browser (50% zoom) • the video playing in fullscreen

The only problem is the smallish display. Only 2 inches means the smallest fonts aren't always readable and you have to go for larger ones. This in turn limits the amount of text that can fit on screen and forces the user to scroll even more.

Organizer and apps

The time-management skills of Nokia 5630, like most other Symbian handsets, are really good. Just name the application and you can bet the handset has it.

We start exploring the rich application package with the calendar. It has three different types of view - monthly, weekly and daily, and four types of events available for setting up - Meeting, Memo, Anniversary and To-do. Every event has its own unique fields, and some of them allow an alarm to be activated at a preset time to act as a reminder.

The calendar month, week and day views • setting up an event

The mobile office is also very well supported with preinstalled applications able to view Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF files seamlessly. Editing documents is not supported out of the box, but hey, we're not talking Eseries here.

If you would like editing enabled you will have to purchase the complete application at the Nokia Download center. The final ingredient here is the included ZIP manager, which allows extracting archived files straight on your phone.

Nokia 5630 handles .doc .xls .ppt and .pdf files seemlessly

Some of the other included PIM applications are a great unit converter, calculator and voice recorder, as well as the Notes application. We are not going to go into detail with them, as their functionality and performance are familiar enough. The ActiveNotes application is also on board allowing multimedia content to be added to your notes.

Calculator, ActiveNotes and converter

The alarm application allows a huge number of alarms to be set, each with its own name, trigger day and repeat pattern.

Setting up an alarm

If the gallery file-management options (which even include sending multiple files at a time) is insufficient you can use the file manager. It allows you to do almost anything you can think of with your files. Copying, moving, creating new folders - you name it and it's a safe bet that the file manager can do it.

The file manager is our favorite • zip manager

The useful "Search" application is also aboard the Nokia 5630. The application itself finds almost every item in your handset containing a given keyword. From messages to landmarks, every bit of data is checked and then all results are displayed on the screen.

Every bit of data is checked by the search application

Finally, the Nokia 5630 features a dictionary with a very rich database. English comes pre-installed but you can also download dozens of other languages for free from the Nokia website.

The dictionary

Games are N-Gaging

Nokia 5630 comes with N-Gage support and several preloaded games. They are trial versions but there's an activation code provided so you can activate one of those games for free. You can of course download new games but they are trials all the way unless you are willing to pay.

There's a lot of N-Gage games, but they are trial versions

On top of that, there are plenty of third-party games out there, so Nokia 5630 users can easily download both native and java titles.

Final words

Nokia are not only keen on populating the XpressMusic grid, they're tailoring and focusing their handsets to cover a wider market. Come to think of it, the XpressMusic portfolio is more like the standard 4-digit models - the "common" phones that are neither top-of-the-line media gadgets nor business tools.

The XpressMusic phones get their edge elsewhere - they're reasonably priced and specialize in music. Throwing Nokia 5630 XpressMusic into the mix, there's a wide range of phones to choose from. Starting with the run-of-the-mill S40 handsets like 5130 or 5310 and going all the way through capable Symbian smartphones to the touch-enabled 5800. The 5630 even has a side-sliding QWERTY counterpart - the Nokia 5730 XpressMusic.

The Nokia 5630 XpressMusic is a great upgrade over the 5320 - faster 3G, Wi-Fi on board, improved camera, a speedy CPU and all in a 12mm slim package. The Contacts bar is a great addition too - all the most common tasks can be carried out in the comfort of the homescreen. Ovi Contacts is a nice feature too, considering that a big part of all communications of a typical high-tech adolescent now goes through some IM network. We'd have liked to see support for more networks though.

The one thing we'll probably never see on an XpressMusic phone however, is a high-resolution camera - with Wi-Fi, GPS and even touchscreens, they'd be too deep into N-Series territory and it's important for Nokia to maintain their brand distinctions.

So, Nokia have taken quite a bite at the music-enabled handsets market with some multi-talented players in Symbian shirts.

If you can live without Wi-Fi support and will settle for a chubby chap with a weaker camera, CPU, and data speeds, the 5630's predecessor - the Nokia 5320 XpressMusic - is the entry level alternative.

Nokia 5320 XpressMusic

If you like the 5630, but want to round off the already impressive package with a QWERTY keyboard and a bigger screen, the side-sliding 5730 XpressMusic is already up for grabs.

Nokia 5730 XpressMusic

Then again, if you want to go up the ladder and have a touch-based UI and GPS, then the 5800 XpressMusic is what you're looking for. It's got a slower CPU but bigger 3.2" screen and VGA@30fps video recording.

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

What we really like about the Nokia 5630 XpressMusic is that it sits comfortably in the middle of all this without losing sight of its one goal - to be a good portable music player. It has the audio-quality and smartphone chops to pull it off without burning a hole in your pocket. We would have liked a beefier camera, but we guess keeping the market price down has been the main priority with Nokia 5630 XpressMusic.