Sometimes, a good shock is just what you need to get yourself going. And Nokia has been having a fair share of experiences in the shocks department of late. The N97 got hammered, the 5800 Xpress Music sold a few million but was not really the iPhone killer it was touted to be and its recent E series and N series phones have not exactly set the market on fire. The pundits have been muttering that the Espoo company is making the same mistake that IBM made in the eighties in the PC business, letting an almost monopolistic command of the market slip away by attempting to be high-tech and neglecting the grass root segment, which actually provides the volumes.
While there is some justice in that argument (when was last time you saw Nokia come out with a powerful phone that was intended for the masses rather than the classes?), there is also evidence that Nokia is shaking off its high-tech fixation and going back to what made it great – solid, feature-rich phones at a reasonable price. At least the forthcoming 5230 certainly seems to represent those values.
We got our hands on a unit a few days prior to its release and while it will not change the world like the iPhone, we are quite sure it is going to get Nokia back onto the cellphone centrestage with a polite cough, rather than a bang. The critics will point out that the 5230 ain’t pretty. Sure, it ain’t – it looks a bit blocky and plasticky. They will say that it runs the same Symbian Series 60 (5th edition) OS that dragged down the N97 and the 5800 and we will nod in agreement. And finally they will carp about the absence of Wi-Fi and the measly 2 MP cam. Again, we will plead guilty on behalf of the device.
So, why do we think that the 5230 is so hot, eh? Well, quite simply because by starting off at a price in the vicinity of $220, Nokia has attempted something that it has not for a while – a feature-rich phone at a relatively low price. The device has a large 3.2 inch touchscreen, GPS, a snazzy contacts and media bar, access to the Ovi Store and very impressive battery life (a day and a half for us). Nokia is not pushing it as a smartphone, but there is no doubting its potential in this department.
Best of all, by delivering these features at a relatively low price point, Nokia has also lowered customer expectations. The touchscreen is not going to be as responsive as that of the HTC Hero or the iPhone 3G, but at that price point, consumers are not going to expect it to – something that was not the case when it came to the N97 and 5800. The low price also means that the 5230 is the perfect device to push both the touchscreen version of the Series 60 and Nokia’s Ovi Store, neither of which have found much favour with the consumer because of high price tags. And of course, consumers would pick the 5230 above the likes of the LG Cookie and the Samsung Star and Corby, simply because it offers so much more on paper.
All of which makes us believe pretty firmly that the 5230 is the phone that is going to turn it around for Nokia. It ain’t pretty and it ain’t as feature loaded as some of the Espoo giant’s other phones but it possesses stacks of something that the others did not – value for money!
Remember, you read it first here.
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