The 5300 is another slider phone with what feels like a rugged build quality and this model has a certain chunkiness about it which is in part helped by the rubberised buttons which feel industrial to the touch.

The main visual difference is the addition of new buttons along side the screen on both sides, these direct access keys drive the media player and are kept behind long coloured rubber strips. They have good tactile feed back making it easy to know you've pushed them but we felt they were a little low rent and as if they had been lifted from an old Psion.

Size: 92.4 x 48.2 x 20.7 mm
Weight: 106 gm

The 5300 comes in a compact slider type designed handset which measures 92.4 x 48.2 x 20.7 mm & weighs 106.5 grams. The handset is simple & super smooth to open as the slide opening mechanism works on a spring mechanism.

The display is outstandingly good. It's a high-resolution QVGA display (320 x 240 pixels) with 262k colours, and it is large (2 inches across).

The built-in camera has a resolution of 1.3 megapixels, and there's a video recording option too. There's no flash in the camera and the picture quality is no better than average for phones in this price range, but imaging is not really the purpose of this phone.

Standard battery, Li-Ion 860 mAh (BL-5B)
Stand-by: Up to 223 h
Talk time: Up to 3 h 10 min

One area where the Nokia 5300 XpressMusic could use some improvement is in battery life. The good news is that you won't drain the battery faster by playing music than you would with typical use. The bad news is that the battery doesn’t last nearly as long as we would like, and you can’t use the included mini-USB-to-USB cable to charge the cell phone’s battery while it’s connected to a computer. If you’re a light cell phone user and plan on listening to a few songs and send/receive a few text messages, the Nokia 5300 will likely last 3 to 4 days before needing a recharge. Heavier callers, texters, and music listeners will likely have to recharge the Nokia cell phone every 2 days.

The Nokia 5300 XpressMusic mobile phone has been beautifully designed by Nokia with the music loving phone user in mind. The handset comes in a choice of two colours & the coloured section enhance the phones screen & dedicated controls. The mobile phone comes in a choice or either red for the more racy user or dark grey for the more subtle user.

Unlike phones that cram in music functions as an afterthought, the Nokia 5300 is a true music phone, with dedicated buttons that start the music with one touch. The music player is simple but effective, with equalizers and playlists. Nokia includes a low-end pair of stereo headphones with a microphone for calling, as well as a small (and easy-to-lose) adapter for attaching your own cans if you so desire. Stereo Bluetooth was easy to set up and use, but we can't say the same about Nokia's dreadfully unfriendly music management software. Not nearly as slick or intuitive as Apple's iTunes desktop client, the buggy and tricky-to-use Nokia music manager is just a single step above a folder hierarchy menu. Back on the plus side, our music transfers were speedy via USB 2.0 to the phone's microSD slot, and though we received a palty 256mb card with our review unit, cards up to 2GB are available. FM radio was easy to use.

5 MB internal memory ; Card slot microSD (TransFlash).

5300 comes with a Micro SD card slot that supports cards up to 2GB in size but the internal memory is a skimpy 5MB of shared space. True, you're more likely to use a memory card for storing multimedia files, but we still think 5MB is much too small for this caliber of phone.
The only real design complaint concerns the placement of the Micro SD card slot. You must remove the battery cover to access it, so make sure you sharpen your nails. Though you don't have to remove the battery as well, it's still a bit annoying

Network Frequency GSM 900 / 1800 / 1900 .

As a basic everyday phone the tri band system seems good enough and our tests proved that it held calls like a mobile Jack Russell. The full range of data service are available with HSCSD/CSD and GPRS and these combined with basic PIM functions of the Series 40 operating system mean you can pick up email and browse the web. although the 5300 isn't exactly a phone for business.

Running the Symbian Series 40 OS, the 5300 is a semi-smart phone and offers voice dialing/command, e-mail, and instant messaging. The 5300 is also equipped with an alarm clock, calendar, to-do list, notes, calculator, countdown timer, and stopwatch functions. When the phone is powered up, the cute flight query prompts you to see if you want to turn off the radio but leave the other non-phone options running. If you turn the flight query option off, you can simply select the "Flight" profile.