Nokia 5310 Cell Phone Review - Multimedia

The Nokia 5310 has decent music software that allows you to organize your music and videos into playlists right on the phone, and the dedicated music buttons on the front give you easy and the fastest access we've ever seen to get a song playing. It has limited video format compatibility, though, so don't count on being able to load your favorite clips in common formats on to the 5310.

Accessing Music Software (28.31)
To test how easy it is to get to the music software, we time how long it takes to go from the home screen in the unlocked state to the point where a song begins to play. Thanks to the dedicated music controls to the left of the screen, the 5310 earned an impressive score in this area - pressing the play button immediately starts playing music, so it took under 1 second consistently to get a song playing. You can also go through the main menu, of course, where the first menu option in the top left is the Music Player software.

This score surpasses that of every other phone we've tested, with only the Motorola Q9M coming close to it. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Dedicated Music Controls (10.0)
As a music-oriented phone, the 5310 has a number of dedicated music controls, much like the LG Chocolate 3. There 3 buttons to the left of the screen that allow you to play and pause music or skip to the next or previous tracks. The volume up and down buttons on the right side of the phone adjust music volume. By default, the 5310's keypad locks automatically after about one minute and 30 seconds, and the dedicated music buttons won't work when the keypad locks. So, if you start some music playing and then put the phone in your pocket and then need to adjust the volume or pause the music a few minutes later, you'll need take the phone out of your pocket, press the D-pad's center button and then the * key to disable the keyguard, which will then allow you to use any of the controls. This behavior is different from that of the LG Chocolate 3 and the iPhone 3G which both allow you to at least use the volume buttons even when the screen or keypad is locked.

Music Software Functionality and Organization (7.4)
The 5310's music software has some good features and automatically sorts your music by Artist, Album, and Genre. Music files added to the phone's memory or saved to the Micro SD card are automatically found and added to the music player, so you don't have to do anything special when you add music to the device. You can also create and edit playlists on the phone itself.   The 5310 can read and display the tags on music files we saved to the Micro SD cards in MP3, WMA, and AAC formats, though it would not display album art for the test album we saved to it. Aside from the automatic sorting the music software already does, you cannot search your music library for a specific song or artist, nor can you assign ratings to songs and create playlists based on them. There are no visualizations to show you moving graphics during music playback. Music continues playing in the background when you exit the music software to go to another application.

Music software

When in the music application, there is a Settings menu accessed via the left soft menu key where you can see the Equalizer settings. The Equalizer includes 5 presets: Normal, Pop, Rock, Jazz, and Classical. In addition to these 5 presets, there are 2 user-customizable profiles named Set 1 and Set 2 where you can manipulate bars representing 5 channels for bass, midrange, and treble and then save your changes.

Song playing

As mentioned in the previous section, getting to the music software is a piece of cake using the dedicated music controls, the left soft key shortcut, or through the main menu. All in all, the 5310's music software is easy to use and get around in.

Online Song Downloading (0.0)
T-Mobile does not have a music service that provides song downloads over the cellular network.

Streaming (0.0)
We test phones with standard sites that offer streaming audio in various formats. The Nokia 5310 would not even load these sites, displaying a "memory full" error in the browser, so no points for streaming here.

Podcast Support (0.0)
The 5310 does not come with any podcast syncing software in the box, nor is there a way to subscribe to or download podcasts directly on to the phone over the air. The only way to load podcasts is to use the included USB cable to connect the phone to your computer as a mass storage device.

Music Sync with PC (7.0)
The user guide states that you can sync music using the Nokia PC Suite software, though it is not included in the box with the phone and must instead be downloaded from Nokia's site. With the included USB cable, the Micro SD card in the 5310 can be used as a mass storage device on your computer so you can manually save and remove music to and from the phone. You can also use Windows Media Player on a PC to manage your music using the included USB cable.

Music Formats and DRM (3.0)
The 5310 had no problems playing and recognizing the tags on the test MP3, AAC, and WMA files without DRM that we transferred to it. It will not recognize files in these formats with DRM. T-Mobile does not have a music service from which users can buy music, so there is no carrier-specific DRM to worry about here.

Music Interruption (8.0)
While you're listening to music and a call comes in, the music stops. When you've finished the call, the music picks up right where it left off before the call. However, there is no gentle fade in and fade out of the music, so if you listen to your music loudly, you'll find the transition before and after a call to be a bit abrupt.

Video Software Access (3.38)
To test how easy it is to use the video software, we time how long it takes to go from the home screen in the unlocked state to the moment a video starts playing. Videos you save to the 5310 can be accessed through the music software and you must go through the main menu to get there. When you get to the music, videos are the last option on the list, and once you open a video, there's a slight delay before it actually starts to play. With all of this, it took nearly 6 seconds on the 5310 to get from the unlocked home screen to a video playing. This isn't bad, and is less time than our average for all the phones we've tested. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Video Controls (7.0)
The Nokia 5310 offers multiple video control options thanks to the music control buttons to the left of the screen that also work with video playback. While a video is playing, the bottom of the screen is dedicated to status and controls - there is a status bar that graphically presents playback progress and shows the elapsed time and total time, and there are icons to show you that the D-pad's select button will pause and play video, and the left and right keys on the D-pad will move forward and backward - when pressed quickly, they skip to the previous or next video, and when held down, they rewind or fast-forward in the current video.

Video controls

The volume up and down buttons on the right side of the phone serve do exactly what you expect them to. The buttons on the left of the screen function in exactly the same way, so it's up to you to decide which set to use - lefties will probably find it easier to use the buttons to the left to the screen, and righties will probably find the D-pad controls to be the easiest to use.

While a video is playing, the left soft menu key is labeled Options and offers the following choices:  Go to Music Menu, Now Playing, Full Screen, Add to Playlist, Settings, Web Page, and Mute Audio. The right soft menu key is labeled Back and takes you to the last menu viewed prior to playing the video, which stops video playback as well.

Video Software & Organization (3.0)
To get to your videos out side of the music application, you go through Fun & Apps to the Gallery. If you've saved your videos to the memory card, which is most likely where you'll put them since the phone itself only has 30MB of memory, you'll need to select it and choose the Videos folder. Videos are shown in list format alphabetically by title with a small thumb-sized image showing the first frame of the video, along with its creation date and size. You can change this view in the Options menu to a List view without details or a Grid view. Through the Options menu, you can choose a sorting option to view them by name, date, format, or size, and you can even create new folders to further sort your videos. When you save new videos to the memory card or phone, the library does automatically update, so you don't have to do anything special to make sure new videos will show up in the Gallery.

Video library software

Through the Options menu, you can choose to use a selected video as a screen saver, a video for incoming calls, or as caller ID for someone in your contacts list. In terms of modifying videos, you can delete, move,  or rename them. You can't rate videos, though you can create video playlists in the music software. Video editing directly on a phone is not typical, so we're not surprised to see this ability missing from the 5310.

Overall, the 5310 offers fairly basic functionality to keep your videos organized that's a bit a bit more flexible than on the LG Chocolate 3. Viewing a video on the 5310 is not all that pleasant on such a tiny screen, so video functionality may not get much use on this phone by most users.

Video Sync with PC (7.0)
As with music, the user guide states that videos can be synced with the Nokai PC Sync software that does not come with the phone and must be downloaded from Nokia's site, but without this software, you can use the included USB cable to load videos on to the Micro SD card. Windows Media Player will also work.

Video Formats (3.0)
The 5310 supports very few video formats - we test many different types of files and it was only capable of playing 3GPP files. This leaves out the Windows Media, MP4, H264, FLV, Flash, MOV, and Real formats, which is disappointing.

Video DRM (0.0)
The 5310 is not capable of playing video files protected with any DRM type.

Video Playback Smoothness (8.0)
We look at video playback with 3GPP files at various bitrates, and the 5310 had no problem playing back any of them - no hiccups, distortion, or any other issues. It's good to see that the 5310 at least does well with the limited video formats it can play back.

Online Video Downloading (0.0)
It's rare that a phone can download video directly to its memory, and the 5310 is no exception here. T-Mobile does not offer a video download service through their T-Zones store.

Video Streaming unscored
There isn't any video streaming standard, so we don't score this area but do look for a phone's capability to do it. We browse to known sites that stream video in various formats, though the 5310 was unable to stream video from any of them.

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