Nokia C5 Review: The New Budget SmartPhone for the Masses That Runs on Symbian S60

With the release of Nokia C5, Nokia is really trying hard to earn itself a solid foothold on the smartphone market. While it is still the world’s undisputed king of cellphone makers, the Finnish company has so far failed to garner any impact on the profitable smartphone category. Apple and Blackberry are lording it over this sector and Nokia’s attempt to dislodge them with similar high-priced models has so far failed. Nokia is changing tact and is now focused on offering cheap smartphone for budget-conscious people.
Enter the Nokia C5, it’s the company’s latest attempt to win the hearts of first-time smartphone users. The C5 sports the same classic Nokia cellphone build which means unlike the E63 or E72 phones, this one doesn’t have a QWERTY keyboard. This is quite unexpected, Nokia has tried to emulate BlackBerry phones before in their smartphone offerings like what they did with the E71, E72 and E63. The C5’s stainless steel casing and simple design is most probably aimed to old-time Nokia users who might be more appreciative in upgrading to a smartphone due to its familiar look and feel. Not many people bought Nokia’s touchscreen model N97 and N97 Mini phones because of its high-price. Perhaps with the C5, Nokia loyalists will choose it over cheap BlackBerry or Android phones.

The Nokia C5 is a cheap smartphone that will appeal to old-time cellphone users

The Nokia C5 comes equipped with the last version of Symbian, S60 series operating system and has full support for Nokia Ovi store and other social networking sites like Facebook, Youtube and Twitter. I found it disappointing though that Nokia failed to include Wi-Fi support for this phone. While it is true that this model features 3G HSDPA up to 10.2 Mbps speed, not many cost-conscious users will be willing to spend money on 3G data plans. Due to the lack of Wi-Fi on this otherwise very excellent phone, I’m giving it only 3 stars out of 5.
Here are some of the features of Nokia C5. It’s nothing to be impressed about but at less than $160 retail price unlocked; this smartphone can sure attract a lot of buyers. First-time smartphone buyers will appreciate this phone for its rugged construction and classic cellphone-build. The processor on the Nokia C5 seemed fast enough to handle Symbian S60. I did not experience any sluggishness of operation or system crash.
Features:

• General 2G Network GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
• 3G Network HSDPA 900 / 2100
• Size Dimensions 112 x 46 x 12.3 mm, 56 cc
• Weight 89.3 g
• Display TFT, 16M colors
• 240 x 320 pixels, 2.2 inches
• Memory Internal 50 MB storage, 128 MB RAM , Card slot microSD, up to 16GB, 2GB included
• Data GPRS Class 32
• EDGE Class 32
• 3G HSDPA, 10.2 Mbps; HSUPA, 2 Mbps
• Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP
• Camera 3.15 MP, 2048×1536 pixels, LED flash
• Video VGA@15fps
• Features OS Symbian OS v9.3, Series 60 rel. 3.2
• CPU ARM 11 600 MHz processor
• Messaging SMS, AMS, MMS, Email, Push Email, IM, RSS
• Browser WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML