How does Nokia’s new “music phone” compare to the iPhone, the supposed pioneer of mobile digital music? We’ll see…
The Nokia 5630 (aka Nokia XpressMusic, aka Media Tube) goes by many names, that’s for sure. But what else do you have? And more pertinently, what does it have that the iPhone 3G doesn’t?
Well, the Nokia 5630 (oddly, the numerically higher successor to the 5800) has an FM tuner, while the iPhone 3G doesn’t. It has a 5-way navigation button and a number pad while the iPhone doesn’t. However, unlike the Nokia 5800 (and also the iPhone), the Nokia 5630 is not a touchscreen smartphone.
Both phones have a speakerphone, but neither has Push-to-Talk. Both support games (the iPhone through the iPhone App Store, the Nokia XpressMusic through Nokia’s N-Gage games catalogue). The Nokia battery lasts 2 hours longer in talk mode than the iPhone (7 hours vs. 5 hours) and an additional 100 hours in standby mode (400 hours vs. 300 hours). The music on the iPhone comes from iTunes (where you pay to own songs and albums indefinitely), while the music on Nokia XpressMusic comes from Nokia’s clever Comes With Music service (where you get unlimited access to the full set of millions of tracks per as long as you’re a subscriber).
The Nokia XpressMusic only has 128MB of built-in memory compared to the iPhone’s 8GB and 16GB options, though the iPhone notably lacks a microSD card expansion slot, while the Nokia XpressMusic does not.
Both phones are 3G smartphones that support the following modes: GSM 850, GSM 900, GSM 1800 and GSM 1900. But the iPhone also supports WCDMA 850, WCDMA 1900, WCDMA 2100, while the Nokia 5630 does not. Both phones have WiFi, Bluetooth, PC sync, and a USB port, but the Nokia doesn’t have GPS, while the iPhone doesn’t just have GPS, its GPS has geotagging capability (a big plus for Apple’s input ).
Appearance-wise, the Nokia 5630 is just over a third larger than the iPhone 3G, but it’s also a third lighter (83g vs. 133g). The iPhone has almost 50% more screen area than the Nokia 5630, and the iPhone also has a much better resolution (320 x 480 compared to 240 x 320). Both phones offer a gamut of 16.7 million colors.
The iPhone’s digital camera has always been one of its weakest features, at just 2 megapixels, while the Nokia 5630 has a 3.2 megapixel camera. Also, the Nokia camera includes a built-in CMOS sensor, flash, 4X zoom lens, red-eye reducer, landscape mode, self-timer, video calling, and video recording, none of which you’ll get with the camera. on the iPhone.
So far, the Nokia 5630 is expected to launch in Europe in the second quarter of 2009 with no scheduled US launch date, which, for many people, will decide between the two right then and there.
