Introduction
The new generation of 1GHz Symbian- powered phones can get far. They need a place to start though and the Nokia 500 is happy to help. The common belief seems to be that there are more exciting things than Symbian on a budget. OK, well, the Nokia 500 is supposed to make you reconsider.
Design and construction
The rich assortment of colorful back covers gives the Nokia 500 enough youth appeal but other than that, it's actually a conservatively designed phone. It's a touchscreen-bar device of simple styling and low-cost finish, nothing extravagant about it.
The curved rear makes it comfortable to hold and the soft rubbery finish is pleasant to touch though probably not very durable. Unfortunately the screen glass and the black glossy frame get covered in fingerprints in no time. The Nokia 500 requires regular cleaning if you want to keep it looking good. The soft rubbery finish of the back cover isn't particularly strong - it appears we managed to scratch it by simply pocketing it or putting it on tables.
The front is dominated by the 3.2" nHD (360x640) capacitive touchscreen. The resolution fits the screen size nicely and the display looks good with pleasingly vibrant colors and enough detail. It's just not as crisp and punchy as a ClearBlack screen.
Unfortunately, outdoor performance is average, bordering on poor. With brightness set at maximum it will do on most occasions.
5GS Touch Screen
Very good audio quality
The Nokia 500 didn't disappoint in our audio quality test. As a matter of fact it manage to bring a nice surprise by performing better than the Nokia 701.
With no reistance applied to its line-out (when used with an active external amplifier), the Nokia 500 achieved great scores all over the field and it was slightly louder than its more expensive sibling. You probably won't be able to detect the difference with a naked ear, but it's still a nice achievement. Even more impressively, the Nokia 500 experiences very little degradation when you do plug a pair of haeadphones. Stereo crosstalk increases less than we are used to, while intermodulation distortion jumps, but still remains at a good level. That's certainly a performance better than the price tag suggests.
Symbian is still one of the most popular smartphone OSes in the world but its application store is pretty barren compared to the two juggernauts, the iOS App Store and Android's Market.
The company has refreshed their Ovi store interface to make it more user-friendly for Symbian^3 and it's what you get on Anna too. And while the UI is indeed very handy to use, the number of apps is somewhat of a problem.
A5 3G Smartphone
The default screen shows a list of featured apps or you can browse the apps available in the Ovi Store by categories ¨C Applications, Games, Audio and Video content, Personalization; or by collections ¨C Summer Gift of Games, Chat Collection, Apps Start Kit, Travel, Tools for Professionals and Apps for Kids are the collections available at the time of this writing.
Your account profile keeps record of all the apps you have installed under My stuff. You can now also select where games and apps should be installed and where audio and video should go. That¡¯s nice ¨C we wish Android had that right from the start.
Free lifetime navigation with Ovi Maps
The Nokia 500 comes with a built-in GPS receiver, which managed to get a satellite lock from a cold start (A-GPS turned off) in about two minutes. Keeping the lock from then on was not an issue for the 500 even in a dense urban environment.
As you probably know since the start of last year Nokia made their Ovi Maps navigation free for all their smartphones, which naturally includes the 500. The voice guidance is currently available in over 70 countries and over 40 different languages, with even traffic information for more than 10 of those.
In addition, Nokia did a pretty decent job of the Ovi Maps application itself, blessing it with a cool, touch-friendly interface, as well as nice features such as the Lonely planet city guide, HRS hotels and the Michelin restaurant guide.
There's also 5-day weather information for cities available along with Map Reporter, which can be used to report inaccuracies you find on the map. You can choose which of those are visible in the menu, which helps avoid clutter.
With Ovi Maps 3.06 you get three different view modes including satellite and terrain maps. Those however do need an internet connection. The more regular 2D and 3D view modes are also at hand and can be used with preloaded maps. Starting with v3.06 can download maps directly from the phone, no computer needed anymore. The route planning algorithm is also rather easy to customize to best suit your preferences. Toll roads and motorways can be avoided and so can tunnels and ferries. Routes can be set to either fastest or shortest. Ovi Maps is also usable for pedestrian navigation or you can switch the GPS receiver off and use the phone as a hand-held map. Ovi Maps 3.06 also joins in on the location check-in craze and supports a long list of networks (but not Foursquare, understandably).
A007 WCDMA+GSM
Final words
Nokia 500 left us with mixed feelings. The spotty web browser and the poor camera performance left a bitter taste and we found it hard to describe the UI as fluid or responsive. In fact, more often than not it was downright laggy.
We¡¯ve seen this new 1GHz hardware platform do much better elsewhere so we are willing to blame it all on the non-optimized software that was rushed to the market. Of course that¡¯s where we got our review unit ¨C right off the store shelves. And we have to say, it performed worse than the pre-market sample we previewed earlier.
Even the free lifetime turn-by-turn navigation and the brightly colored exchangeable rear covers didn¡¯t make up for the poor impression.
What¡¯s more - the asking price of Nokia 500 doesn¡¯t seem all that reasonable either. Currently, the Nokia 500 can be found for about 170-200 euros, the kind of money that will buy an Android smartphone like the latest Sony Ericsson Xperia mini and we are not even talking the X10 flavor.