5530 Xpress Music

These days there is a craze for touch phones and everyone cannot afford iPhone. So, basic entry level touch phones are selling like hotcakes and there is a huge competition in the budget touch range. The first players to make their presence were Samsung Star and LG Cookie. But now you’ve more options in this category in the form of Samsung Corby S3650 and Nokia 5530 XpressMusic. Lets compare these two in detail -

Nokia 5530

Samsung Corby S3650

Looks and Design - Both Samsung Corby and Nokia 5530 are quite attractive. Samsung Corby is pebble shaped with smooth curvy edges whereas Nokia 5530 has comparatively sharper edges with metallic lining running across the edge. Samsung Corby is also know as Genio Touch. It weighs 90 g whereas Nokia 5530 weighs 115 g.

Display – Samsung Corby has a capacitive touchscreen whereas Nokia 5530 has a resistive touch display. If you’ve used iPhone you may be familiar with capacitive display. Samsung Corby has 2.8 inch display with 240×320 pixels whereas 5530 has 2.9 inch display with 360×640 pixels screen resolution.

Memory - Nokia 5530 has 70 MB internal memory and its sales package contains 4GB micro SD card. Samsung Corby has 90 MB phone memory with 1 GB memory card included. Nokia 5530 supports micro SD card upto 16 GB whereas Corby supports cards upto 8 GB.

Software - Here lies the main difference between Samsung corby and 5530 xpressmusic. If you need a basic touch phone you can do very well with Samsung Corby but if you need a true smartphone 5530 is the one based on Symbian S60v5 Operating System. Being a smartphone it supports 3rd party applications as well as multitasking.

Samsung Corby is a basic touch phone but it has something great to offer. It has got widget support and unique smart unlock feature.Nokia 5530 offers kinetic scrolling.

Hardware - As 5530 is a Symbian smartphone it has more powerful hardware as compared to Samsung Corby. Nokia 5530 has 434 MHz CPU and 128 MB RAM. Being a non smartphone Samsung Corby hardware specs are unknown.

Connectivity – Nokia 5530 offers Wifi for high speed connectivity. Along with that the other connectivity options are GPRS, EDGE, Bluetooth v2.1 with A2DP and USB 2.0 support.

Samsung Corby lacks high speed connectivity options, you have to rely on slow GPRS connection for internet. It also offers EDGE, Bluetooth v2.1 with A2DP and USB 2.0 support.

Mutimedia – Nokia 5530 belongs to XpressMusic range so it offers excellent audio quality both through speakers and headphones. It has got stereo speakers and 3.5 mm standard audio jack. High resolution display is an added advantage for watching videos. With the help of 3rd party applications such as Smartmovie Player you can run DVDrip movies in .avi format without conversion.

Samsung corby offers excellent audio quality through speakers but lacks 3.5 mm headphone jack. For playing .avi videos conversion is needed first to 3GP or MP4 format which is time consuming and reduces the video quality.

Camera – Nokia 5530 has 3.2 MP autofocus camera with LED flash, whereas Samsung Corby has 2 MP fixed focus camera without flash. Corby camera offers smile detection feature.

Video recording is also of higher quality in 5530. It can record QVGA videos at 30 frames per second.

Additional Features – Both 5530 and Corby offers Accelerometer (motion based sensor). 5530 also includes Proximity sensor to auto turn-off screen during calls.

Price - At the time of launch Unlocked Nokia 5530 was quite costly, around $ 250 but now its price has gone down to around $200. So Samsung Corby and Nokia 5530 now falls in the same price range.

Conclusion - Nokia 5530 offers more value for money in the form of high resolution display, Wifi, 3.2 MP autofocus camera with flash and 30 fps video recording, 3.5 mm standard audio jack and most important Symbian OS. Samsung Corby is equally good touch phone with USP being capacitive display, widget support and smart unlock feature .