Nokia C5-03 Review
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Review: February 2011 |
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Phone rating: 
In a nutshell: The C5-03 is another uninspired Nokia smartphone
running the old Symbian operating system. With its unresponsive resistive
touchscreen, poor camera with fixed focus, no flash and lack of adequate
memory, it serves as a sad example of everything that's gone wrong with
Nokia. Available in Graphite and Green.
Best buy: *Free* from Buy
Mobile Phones; or on Pay as you Go for £122.50 from PrePayMania
(Graphite).
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The Nokia C5-03 is the successor to the highly
popular Nokia 5230 and is a mid-range
smartphone. Physically the phone looks and feels very much like
the 5230. It's slightly smaller and lighter, but retains a 3.2 inch
screen as well as 3 buttons below. The screen is exactly the same
as in the 5230 and is the same size as the similarly-priced HTC
Wildfire. It's a good size for a phone of this price, although
being resistive rather than capacitive it does take a bit of poking
to make it respond sometimes.
Now the 5230 was released a whole year before the
C5-03, so we were anticipating some significant improvements in
the C5-03. But it seems that time is standing still at Nokia. There's
little improvement, and some things have actually gone backward.
Most gobsmackingly awful is the fact that the C5-03 still uses Symbian
Series 60. It's slow, it's unresponsive, it crashes if there's an
"r" in the month or a "d" in the day and in
combination with the cheap and nasty resistive screen makes for
an unpleasant user experience.
The camera has been upgraded to 5 megapixels, but
there's still no flash or autofocus. Whilst the aGPS with Ovi Maps
goes some way to redeeming the phone, the paltry 40MB of built-in
memory and the lack of even video calling makes it look like Nokia
are taking the micky with this phone. They're
even quoting an extraordinary battery standby of 25 days. Considering
that it's powered by a less-than-impressive 1000 mAh battery, we
think it'll be more likely to average a few days in the real world.
This is not the worst phone in the world, but it's
very mundane. And when you consider that it's priced at around the
£150 level (that's three times the price of the almost identical
Nokia 5230) you'd be better off considering
the HTC Wildfire or perhaps even
take a punt on the Samsung Wave with
its Super AMOLED screen and HD video. Even the antiquated Nokia
5800 is a better buy.
Features
of the Nokia C5-03 include:
- Symbian S60 5th edition smartphone
- 5 megapixel camera with 3x digital zoom
- Video recording at up to 640 x 352 resolution
and up to 15 fps, 2x digital video zoom
- Display: Touchscreen, 16.7 million colours,
640 x 360 pixels (3.2 inches) with automatic display rotation
and proximity sensor
- Nokia Ovi player (MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA
formats)
- FM radio
- Ringtones: MP3 & video ringtones, 64-voice
polyphonic ringtones, vibration alert
- A-GPS with Ovi Maps 3.0
- Voice commands: speaker independent dialling
and voice commands
- Voice recorder
- Integrated handsfree speaker
- Messaging: SMS, MMS, email (support for IMAP,
POP, SMTP) plus attachments, Audio messaging
- Internet: HSCSD, GPRS, EDGE, HSDPA (10.2 Mbps),
XHTML web browser
- Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR,
USB, 3.5 mm audio jack
- Memory: 40MB plus microSD memory card slot (up
to 16 GB supported)
- Offline mode
- 3G plus quadband GSM (850/900/1800/1900 MHz)
- Size: 106 x 51 x 13.8 mm
- Weight: 93g
- Battery: 1000 mAh
- Talktime: up to 11.7 hours
- Battery standby: 600 hours
Nokia C5-03 Consumer Reviews
Love your mobile? Hate it? Please share your experiences to help other
people choose the phone that's best for them. Please do not review this
phone if you have not used it. This is a review site, not a forum, so
please don't just ask questions. Please do not use swear words or offensive
language, and please, no advertising!
Average rating from 20 reviews:
Reviewed by Amit from Indian on 30th Jan 2012
Hang problun restrart problum
Rating:  Reply
Reviewed by howard baker from uk on 19th Dec 2011
DON'T BUY ONE OF THESE PHONES !!!!!.....IT IS UTTER RUBISH, I HAVE NEVER
HAD A PHONE BEFORE WITH SO MANY POOR FEATURES & BAD RECEPTION.......DO
NOT HAVE ONE !!!!!
Rating: Reply
Reviewed by Surya from India on 11th Dec 2011
It is best phone but lack of internal memory it will turn of automatically
while browsing and it doesn't even had telugu or any other language
keypad and even telugu messages cannot be revied
Rating: 
Reply
Reviewed by Suyog from India on 13th Nov 2011
Its amazing phone and multi usefull apps..i like it. Its design is very
good
Rating:
Reply
Reviewed by Derek from Studham from England on
12th Nov 2011
The Nokia C5 is the worst phone I have ever bought. It does not connect
via WIFI to email or internet consistently well to be reliable. Answering
calls outside is difficult as the screen has 2 swipe commands one to
unlock the other to answer. If in the daylight you can't see them properly
the call in is locked or lost as I try and swipe the right point. The
lag time in running is frustrating, the lock unlock button is constantly
being used in the middle of tasks as the phone thinks it should save
power. The battery standby life in this one is 48 hours not 600. Talk
time well it will not last a working day if used moderately. I have
to get another phone.
Rating: Reply
Reviewed by David from Ponders End on 25th Oct
2011
I have this for two weeks and love it, the best phone I ever had, the
screen on it is very responsive, the camera is brilliant, calls sound
good, the browser is great and has flash, the battery life is good and
I can carry a spare to change in a couple of seconds if needed. Well
done to all at Nokia
Rating:
Reply
Reviewed by Tony from Spain on 11th Oct 2011
Just had the phone out of the box and the first thing i noticed is unresponsive
touch screen.
Rating: 
Reply
Reviewed by pavan kuamr javvaji from india on
8th Oct 2011
the positives of the phone are : 1) 5mp cam 2) 3g with high speed upto
10.2 mbps 3)wifi 4)one of the best navigations and gps coming to negatives
of phone: 1) no flash 2) no front cam 3)the internal memory is too less
4)the phone restarts when v use gps for long tym 5)it has resistive
touch pad 6) cant open more than 3 apps a tym as it wil tel "insufficient
memory plz close some applications and tryagain" i have exploited this
phone to the greatest extent.. i found it boring after a week.. install
"spb shell" it makes the phone interesting.. overall go for some other
phone like samsung galaxy pop which comes for the same price....
Rating:
Reply
Reviewed by Anshu bhalla from India on 7th Oct
2011
I love love love this phone very much muaah its my fav i have ever used
i found no deffeciency in it Except flash but still i love it
Rating:
Reply
Reviewed by Sravanthi from India on 22nd Sep 2011
I have been using this since 5months. Its very unresponsive. It cant
withstand my rate of input commands.The screen has become so ugly in
one months span that it looks as if I was using it since 2 years. I
have had Nokia 2700 Classic which is far better than C5 03. Though the
camera is 5MP, I find images taken with 2700 are better than C5 03.
I can never get rid of this as it has been gifted to me... :-( I end
up cursing it... Connecting to Internet is easier now, I dont like use
it for anything else practically...
Rating: Reply
Reviewed by Dominic from South Africa on 10th
Sep 2011
iv'v had this phone for 2 days and it's already the screen requires
a lot of tapping before it responds and it's slow.
Rating:
Reply
Reviewed by rohit from india on 15th Aug 2011
bestphone!
Rating:
Reply
Reviewed by Rocky maviya from India on 13th Jul
2011
Nokia c5-03 is much better than 5230 cause it has good image qualty
with 5mp camera, 600MHz procsr with wifi slim and stylis look in somuch
low cost, im usin this fone from last 4 mnths nd its awsome i give my
c5-03 rating 100/100
Rating:
Reply
Reviewed by anoy from private on 23rd Jun 2011
Bad choice, I own this phone and i prefer n8-00 as it is many a lot
better.
Rating: Reply
Reviewed by 7osni from Egypt on 21st May 2011
ok we have lived before with resistive touchscreens but the phone is
very very slow. why does nokia keep trying to fool us?
Rating:
Reply
Reviewed by Jerry from Medusa Cascade on 4th Apr
2011
Best phone I have ever had, love it, replacement for 5530 that I broke
at work.
Rating:
Reply
Reviewed by Tom from England on 30th Mar 2011
Bad, Don't Buy.
Rating: Reply
Reviewed by Harry from England on 16th Mar 2011
The best phone I have ever had , works fantastic, good replacement for
my iphone 4 that some scumyob stole last week.
Rating:
Reply
Reviewed by Steven from England on 14th Mar 2011
I have had a Nokia 5230 for a year, I just got C5-03 and it is fantastic,
neither of these were slow, no freezing in fact none of the problems
that were mentioned in your review. Since when was the nokia 5mp camera
"poor", on my C5-03 the camera is excellant. This phone is an improvement
on 5230 and is better than a lot of the expensive phones for sheep that
are being pushed just now.
Rating:
Reply
Reviewed by Rohan from India on 2nd Mar 2011
Mobile phone reviews on this website are generally very reliable and
unbiased, but this particular review seems to be highly inaccurate and
biased against Nokia. The review says that C5-03 has no wifi, but the
Nokia website clearly mentions that this phone has wifi. The review
also says that Nokia C5-03 has the same screen resolution as HTC Wildfire,
whereas in the respective feature lists of both the phones on this website
itself, the screen resolution of HTC Wildfire is mentioned as 240 x
320 and that of Nokia C5-03 as 640 x 360. That's almost twice the screen
resolution. Why is a reputed website like this publishing such misleading
reviews and quoting inaccurate information ? And what if the touch screen
is resistive ? Some users like me actually prefer resistive touch screens,
which can be operated with stylus. Please ignore the rating given by
me, I have not actually used the phone.
Rating:
Reply
Reply by Mobile Phones UK from UK on
2nd Mar 2011
Thank you for your comments, Rohan, and you are correct about the Wi-Fi,
which has now been corrected. Our overall assessment of the phone remains
the same, however. The majority of users don't get on with resistive
screens and the problems of Symbian are well documented in thousands
of user reviews on this site.
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