Nokia 5230 Nuron (photos)

You don't have to pay a fortune to get a smartphone. Check out the budget-friendly Nokia 5230 Nuron for T-Mobile.

Bonnie Cha

March 22, 2010 10:43 a.m. PT

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Nokia 5230 Nuron

The Nokia 5230 Nuron will be available from T-Mobile on March 24, 2010, for $69.99 with a two-year contract.

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Features

Nokia preloads the Nuron with Ovi Maps, so that you get maps for the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, voice-guided navigation, Lonely Planet city guides, and more--all included in the price of the phone. It's also the first smartphone from a U.S. carrier to come preloaded with the Ovi Store.

To keep the phone's cost down, Nokia left a few features off the Nuron, including Wi-Fi and a higher-end camera.

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Design

The Nokia 5230 Nuron shares a number of design similarities as the Nokia 5800 series, including the Navigation Edition model pictured here.

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Dimensions

The Nuron measures 4.37 inches tall by 2.03 inches wide by 0.61 inch thick and weighs 3.98 ounces. It's a compact and lightweight handset, but the plastic battery cover makes it feel a bit slick.

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Display

The smartphone has a 3.2-inch resistive touch screen with a 640x360-pixel resolution and support for up to 16.7 million colors.

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Keyboard

The display has a built-in accelerometer so you get both an onscreen portrait and landscape keyboard. However, the screen's smaller size makes typing on the keyboard feel a bit cramped and we wish the screen was capacitive instead of resistive since the latter isn't as sensitive to touch as we like.

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Navigation controls

Below the display are the Talk and End keys, and a main menu button.

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Right side

The right side of the phone has a volume rocker, a lock switch, and a camera activation-capture button.

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Top view

On top of the device, you'll find a Micro-USB port, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a power connector, and a power button.

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Camera

The Nuron's 2-megapixel camera is a step down from the Nokia 5800's 3.2-megapixel camera. However, it offers 3x digital zoom, video recording capabilities, and editing options.

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Picture quality

With its lower camera, the Nuron's photo quality was just mediocre. Its colors were a bit washed out and its pictures were slightly hazy. However, its video quality was pretty decent.