The Nokia 5230 has not been on the market that long, but you can appreciate how significant the release of a new Nokia handset is when you consider that there are already several websites dedicated solely to the Nokia 5230 and nothing else. This is very early days and because these sites are run for the love of the phone rather than to make a profit, you should not expect the kind of professional finish that you might see elsewhere on the web. However, if you have a Nokia 5230, or if you are thinking about picking one up, you can learn a lot more about the phone if you look at the community sites rather than relying on the mainstream sites which are usually biased in one direction or the other. Obviously these fan sites are in favour of the 5230, but by not being disparaging, they are able to get the absolute maximum enjoyment from the phone at all times.

One useful function of the community sites surrounding the Nokia 5230 is the provision of reviews for third party software. At the moment Nokia’s Ovi Store is still developing and it is not the best place to get reviews of the apps that it offers, so you will need to seek your advice elsewhere. For example, if you want to browse the internet on the 5230, but are dissatisfied with the included browser software, then you could check out a few third party alternatives, having read up a little bit about them online. One option is Skyfire S60v5, which is compatible with any smartphone based on the Symbian S60 software platform. Skyfire gives you various features that are not offered by other browser and attempts to emulate the full desktop browsing experience on your mobile. Opera Mobile 10 is another good third party browser which works excellently on the Nokia 5230’s large touch screen. Or if you want to keep your data costs down you could go for Opera Mini 5, which compresses web pages remotely before sending them to your phone, speeding up loading times as a consequence. There are many more third party browsers to check out and for honest opinions you should visit the community sites dedicated to the Nokia 5230.

Community sites can also be useful tools if you want to hack your Nokia 5230. Hacking is probably a little too strong a term to use here, as it immediately conjures up images of viruses, identity theft and even international terrorism. However, hacking mobile phones is completely different and millions of people do it in order to install some of the third party software that is developed for their platforms, but that is not officially sanctioned by Nokia. The Nokia 5230 requires the user to have officially ratified apps which must be ’signed’ in order to work. Homebrew coders create apps that do not have signing capabilities and as such are unusable on Nokia 5230’s which remain unhacked. Hacking your phone will enable you to install third party software without having to go through convoluted means. You do not need to be a computing whizz kid to hack your phone, as the community has generated several free apps that can be used to open it up to all of the content that you could possibly imagine. There are community sites with detailed guides relating to how to hack the Nokia 5230, complete with photographs to get you through each step unscathed. When performing any kind of modification or hack which Nokia did not intend you to, it is essential to back up all of your data, including contacts and photos. If you do not feel confident enough to hack your Nokia 5230 then you can always download and install apps in the standard way and there are many independent developers who have made content that works using Nokia’s installing system, so there is no pressing need to hack your phone if you do not want to.

If you have yet to purchase a Nokia 5230, you might think that looking at community sites will be of no benefit to you. However, they can often contain useful information that will help you to make your decision. For example, some will contain photographs that other users have taken with the 5230’s digital camera. This kind of thing is performed by professional reviewers as well, but their photos are often of generic household objects or buildings. If you want to see how the camera performs when pointed at groups of people or common scenes, then the community is the place to look.

Hopefully you will now be a little bit more receptive to the community that is steadily growing around the Nokia 5230. Many Nokia fan sites will deal with the phone in part, but there are those that dedicate their entire existence to the 5230. On a side note, there is a truly hilarious video on YouTube, produced by Nokia itself, which was released to show off the 5230 before its launch. The visual content is not particularly odd, although the hand model featured has notably large nails, perhaps to take the place of a stylus. It is the music that makes the advert, which sounds like a completely insane version of a track that would play in the background of a particularly cheerful version of Mario Kart. Nokia clearly has a sense of humour when it comes to its music phones.

Tags: nokia, nokia 5230

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