When smart phones were introduced, they were not designed for low level affordable segments. However, Nokia didn’t want to miss a large niche and it already has developed a series of smart phones with a few left out features for those who want affordable touch screen mobile phones. Nokia 5230 is smart and has touch screen interface, but the price of it is affordable. The dimensions of the Nokia 5230 are 111 x 51.7 x 15.5 mm and it is pretty lighter weighing only 115 g.

It is the 3.2" TFT resistive touch screen with 360 x 640 pixels resolution that dominates the front panel of Nokia 5230. The sensitivity is good but not among the best. However sunlight legibility is poor compared to other touch screen mobile phones from Nokia. The stylus can be used for easy menu access. Call, end and menu buttons are below the screen. Though the Nokia 5230 is a low end phone it has excellent look. The design and placement of keys are well optimized and satisfactory.

The Nokia 5230 is equipped with a 2MP camera but it doesn't pack flash or self portrait mirror. The maximum image resolution is 1600 x 1200 pixels, but it doesn’t perform well especially in low light conditions. Videos are recorded at VGA resolution at 30fps. Even with MPEG 4 format support, the quality of videos is not quite brilliant.

The music player is basic and it is loaded with features. It's easy to creat and edit play lists on this phone. The equalizer presets are available and if you want more, you can always create a new one. There are no issues with audio quality with the speakers and the headset. The video player is good to watch, however, lack of XViD and DivX support is prickly. The FM radio with RDS support is complete and functional.

Nokia 5230 is smart, packing the Symbian S60 OS. The UI has many more polished features to enhance the user experience. Screen orientation is adjusted automatically with the accelerometer sensor. The home screen has customizable icons and a single touch is all that is required to activate the icon menus. The music player and mini apps can be played in the background, and hence the Nokia 5230 offers quite a bit of multitasking environment. Flick scrolling is employed all over the interface making it an easy to use application.

You can store as many contacts as you will because of the virtually unlimited phonebook space. Organizing and searching the phonebook is easier with dynamic keypad which predicts the next letter depending on the contacts you have stored. There is no smart dialing feature and you have to be satisfied with voice dialing.

Basic messaging types – SMS, MMS and email is supported using the integrated editor. The interface detects the type of message automatically depending on contacts you choose and type of messages. In the portrait mode, you can use the alphanumeric keypad to type messages, but if you want a QWERTY keyboard, you will need to tilt the phone to landscape mode. There is also a handwriting recognition option which allows you to use the stylus for composing text.

The Nokia 5230 provides GPRS, EDGE and 3G support, but it lacks Wi-Fi which is a great disappointment. For local connectivity, you can rely on either Bluetooth or USB. Without a data plan, your bill may run to heavy numbers. The web browser is definitely usable with auto fill in forms and password manager features. The organizer package is pretty simple, without any document viewer. The availability of a GPS receiver in Nokia 5230 is a good sign and preinstalled Ovi maps is very helpful for navigation. The 5230 packs a Li-Ion 1320 mAh battery which promises 432 hours standby time, talk time of 7 hours for 2G and 4 hours 30 minutes for 3G and music play of 33 hours.