Screen

The Nokia 5300 XpressMusic's display is an impressive QVGA 320 x 240 px, 2.0-inch TFT (Thin Film Transistor) LCD, capable of showing up to 262K-colors.

TFT technology generally offers brighter, more vivid colors and quicker refresh rates compared to other LCD technologies such as OLED (Organic Light-Emitting Diode) and STN (Super-Twisted Nematic) screens which sacrifice vibrancy for lower power consumption. The screen is big enough to display signal strength, time, battery life and photo caller ID.

For comparison, current state-of-the-art mobile LCDs offer up to 16.7 million colors, while entry-level basic LCDs display just 65K-colors. Considered average in the mobile industry, the 5300's 262K-color screen offers a wide range of colors that most users will not be able to distinguish unless placing it next to handhelds with 16.7 million colors.

Audio

The audio quality on the 5300 XpressMusic is excellent, both when using the external speaker located just under the battery on the back of the phone and when using a headset or ear buds. Without headphones, sound quality is best if the phone is closed and resting on its side.

Users can access their music quickly and easily with the dedicated Music Keys. Pressing the Play / Pause button on the left side of the screen automatically activates the music player; playing whatever song was last played. The screen displays the track number and the name of the song. There is a Skip button that lets listeners choose between tracks, again without having to switch to a music-player-dedicated screen. Like the iPod, consumers can listen to all tracks, or listen by artist, album, genre or composer.

The 5300 XpressMusic also comes with an FM radio that tunes to stations automatically and has 20 presets. The radio plays on headphones or on the external speakers, but for some reason, the headphones must be plugged in in order to opt to listen to the radio on the external speaker (not the case with the music player).

Configured to work with the AT&T Yahoo! Music Jukebox, users can download songs by simply plugging in the supplied USB cable from the 5300 XpressMusic to a computer. The included Nokia PC suite allows users to download all the music available on their computer in MP3, MIDI, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+ and WMA formats. It's also possible to download songs from the Internet directly onto the phone.

Songs on AT&T Yahoo! Music cost 99 cents - compared to Verizon's VCAST, where customers pay $1.99 per full-length song. The player stores up to 1,500 songs with the 2 GB memory card. Consumers can use their own headphones with the 2.5 mm Nokia AV Connector, which adapts standard 3.5 mm headphone plugs to the smaller hole on the 5300. T-Mobile ships the phone with four free pre-downloaded songs, plus a coupon from AT&T Yahoo! Music for three free songs from its music library.

The 5300 has voice-activated dialing, accepts voice commands for other phone functions, and has a voice recorder with the ability to store short parts of a phone conversation or voice memos. The unlocked model of this phone is a GSM quad-band (850, 900, 1800 and 1900 MHz network) world phone, but the T-Mobile locked version is only a GSM tri-band (850, 1800, 1900 MHz network).

In addition to silent and vibrate modes, the 5300 comes with seven ringtones. More are available for download from T-Mobile. Users can also choose downloaded music from the music player as a ringtone.

Messaging

T-Mobile Web gives users wireless access to the Internet for sending email, instant messages and joining chatrooms. Text input options include four languages (English, Spanish, French and Portuguese) and the standard word prediction function, which anticipates words as the user is spelling them.

SMS text messages can be created with up to 260 characters, with the 5300 automatically breaking up messages longer than 260 characters into multiple texts. Additional forms of messaging include picture, video and sound clip messages, Web-based email and instant messaging with AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger, ICQ and Yahoo! messenger.

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