Nokia 5250 review: Back to basics

A Symbian phonebook

The Nokia 5250 phonebook has virtually unlimited capacity and its functionality is certainly among the best out there. The Nokia 5250 contacts list has kinetic scrolling enabled and it’s among the better examples to find on a Nokia touch phone.

Contacts can be freely ordered by first or last name and you can also set whether the contacts from the SIM card, the phone memory and the service numbers will get displayed.

The fully-functional phonebook

When searching for a contact you make use of a clever dynamic keypad, which shows you only the letters that correspond to actual contacts. Once you type in a first letter, their number decreases, leaving only the ones that actually make up real contacts names. A really convenient tool indeed.

Nokia have a pretty convenient solution for searching the contact list

Editing a contact offers a variety of preset fields and you can replicate each of them as many times as you like. You can also create new fields if you happen to be able to think of one.

You can also assign personal ringtones and videos. If you prefer, you may group your contacts and give each group a specific ringtone.

Editing a contact's details in the S60 phonebook Nokia 5250

The Call log keeps track of your recent communications. The application itself comes in two flavors – accessed by pressing the Call key on the stand-by screen or from the main menu. The first one brings 20 call records in each of its tabs for outgoing, received and missed calls.

The call log keep a detailed record of your recent communications

If you access the Log application from the main menu, you'll see a detailed list of all your network communications for the past 30 days. These include messages, calls and data transfers.

Telephony: no smart-dial

Voice quality is good on both ends of calls, the earpiece sound is crisp and there were no reception problems whatsoever.

The only real downside is the still missing smart dialing functionality. Some may argue it's not as essential on a touchscreen but most of the competition has it duly covered. Not to mention WinMo devices have a very elaborate smart dial system that even searches in your Calls log for numbers that are not in your contacts list.

The dialing pad

Voice dialing is an option with the Nokia 5250 as with almost any other phone. The voice dialing mode is activated once you press and hold the Call key. It is fully speaker-independent and doesn't require pre-recording the names of your contacts. Bear in mind though, that if you have multiple numbers assigned to a contact, the first or the default one gets dialed.

Thanks to the built-in accelerometer, you can silence an incoming call (or an alarm) by simply flipping the handset over. Also, during a call the proximity sensor makes sure the screen turns automatically off when you pick it up to your ear.

The in-call screen and available options

Using the hardware screen-lock switch you can not only unlock the phone but also silence it.

The Nokia 5250 scored an Excellent in our traditional loudspeaker test. More info on our test can be found here.

Speakerphone test	Voice, dB	Pink noise/ Music, dB	Ringing phone, dB	Overall score
Sony Ericsson Vivaz	64.8	59.8	69.1	Below Average
Nokia 5230	65.8	60.3	66.7	Below Average
Nokia 5800 XpressMusic	75.7	66.5	68.5	Good
Nokia 5530 XpressMusic	70.6	69.7	75.7	Good
Nokia 5250	76.0	72.7	83.5	Excellent