Nokia 5530 XpressMusic review

As you can imagine from a dinky phone without a 3G chip on board, the battery life is pretty darn spiffy. We nailed the device as hard as we could for nearly two days straight before it gave up on us - but then again our web browsing efforts were certainly down due to the painful speeds achieved.

We were impressed, however, by the battery life of the music player. We were quoted 27 hours of continuous playback, and while we never reached that level we did use it on a long train ride back from Scotland and found it lasted very well indeed, especially when we were throwing a little bit of video in there too.

LONG BATTERY LIFE: The 1000mAh battery lasted particularly well

We anticipate, based on our efforts, talktime will be good as well, seeing as a half-hour conversation didn't rob us of a bar of battery (which so many phones do) so despite only having a 1000mAh battery under the hood, Nokia has optimised the 5530 XpressMusic well for the task.

The organiser consists of the usual suspects we've become accustomed to finding on the Nokia S60 handsets: the functional if unspectacular calendar, the calculator, the converter and the opportunity to write little notes to yourself.

The calendar is certainly good enough to use day to day - if you're a personal trainer for instance, you could easily keep track of all your clients in there. Similarly, if you're worried about which weight to use in kilos or pounds, or whether you're supposed to run in km/h or mph, this phone can work for you (although you sound like you don't know your way very well around a gym).

The note taker sadly doesn't let you scribble down notes to look at later - you can use the handwriting recognition, but that only enters the letters 'properly'... what a killjoy.