Nokia 5700 went off to a flying start with its very release, earning itself quite a number of fans. Smartphone functionality topped with music phone charisma was sure to appeal to all walks of life. Although its design was originally meant to mostly please the young, Nokia 5700's curvy lines and lacquered plastic are enjoyed by men and women of all ages.

We started this review with a couple of questions on our mind, and we put the phone to the test looking for the answers. First and more important, we were wondering which one gained the upper hand in Nokia 5700 - music phone or smartphone. And secondly we wanted to know what had changed in the music lineup since the Nokia 3250 release. Answering the first one was going to involve a lot of digging, while the other didn't need this much of an effort. Only a quick glance at both handsets' specs was enough to convince us that Nokia had not been wasting their time. The display is now bigger and offers QVGA resolution and 16M colors. Connectivity has undergone a major improvement, with 3G support added. All that, plus shedding a good 15g of weight, clearly shows that Nokia 5700 and Nokia 3250 are two phones that simply do not belong to the same class.

The box

The retail package we got the phone with was quite well equipped. Alongside a 1 GB microSD memory card, there's a wired remote serving as an adapter for plugging the included 3.5mm earphones into the phone's 2.5 mm jack. The earphones turned out quite a pleasant surprise, but we'll come back to that later when we look at the music capabilities of the handset. The other package contents included an adapter for the microSD card (making it compatible with standard SD card-readers) plus a USB cable. Of course a DC charger was also present and, to our greatest pleasure, we found out that this phone was using the latest Nokia AC-5 charger. It's the most compact and yet best performing among its Nokia siblings. A CD with the required software for synchronizing your phone with a PC, a manual and a booklet highlighting the Nokia 5700 most important features complete the box contents. Most of these of course are strictly market-dependant, so we cannot guarantee that everyone will get the same bunch of extras that we did.

The retail package has some pleasant surprises for you

Revolver Action

The phone comes in three different color versions including Red, Gray and Black but with all of them the rotating part and the top part are finished in very nice looking lacquered white plastic. It looks very durable and blends well with all the different color versions of the rubber sides and the plastic battery cover. We received the black version for testing and we have to admit we liked that color combo very much.

We are more than pleased with the construction of the 5700. The casing didn't produce any creaks during our test, and it didn't seem likely to start playing up after a few months of use. The phone is also very comfortable to hold, the rubber sides provide for a great grip.

In terms of size Nokia 5700 is a little bit above the average. It is bigger than common phones (108 x 50 x 17 mm), but not as heavy as you would've guessed from the numbers. It weighs exactly 115 grams. And, a real nicety: the phone is fingerprint proof with even the shiny plastic surfaces very hard to blotch during normal operation. In other words, cleaning is no issue for 5700 owners.