The Nokia Xpress Music mobile phones have rapidly taken up a prominent position as one of the leading lights in the music-phone market, putting them hot-on-the-heels of Sony Ericssons equally-proficient Walkman range. A recent addition to a lower-end of these handsets is the 5310, a candy-bar handset with a colour scheme and design tweaks take from the 5300 Xpress Music.

Even for a mid-range bar-phone, the 5310 is tiny with a width of only 9.9mm, making it even more of a surprise how much has been squeezed in. Weight has been limited to only 71 grams as well, clearing showing that Nokia are starting to get to grips with slim line phones, an idea that Nokia entered into with the 6300 and have gone upwards from there ever since. The quality of the materials does deserve plenty of commendation as Nokia have actually thought about this rather than using the same old generic materials seen elsewhere. A dimple-patterned back-cover has been used which allows for much easier grip when held, showing that usability is a key point for this phone.

Continuing in this vein is the main keypad, which is pretty much perfect, there’s no other word for it. Even though there is no space between each key, each of them have been terraced (or ‘raised’) to a good degree making it ideal for texting in particular.

With the 5310 you get a 2 Megapixel camera which has neither autofocus nor flash, but still manages to produce some good-quality snaps in the right environment ie; outdoors, landscape & daylight.

Clearly the focal point of the 5310 is the music player, and happily this is not without good reason. Nokia’s usual software is still present, but to as the saying goes, if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it. That’s not to say that nothing has been done. A dedicated audio chip has been implemented to enhance the sound and it does the trick perfectly. It’s not an exaggeration to say that only dedicated music players and high-end music phones like the Sony Ericsson W960i offer better sound-quality.

To keep the ball rolling, an SDHC slot has been added to offer compatibility with memory cards up to the 4GB officially, but it’s a real possibility that the newly released 8GB cards will be compatible as well, but of course that’s completely unofficial.

Although the Nokia 5310 is a little low on features, the fact is that this has been designed to appeal to those not looking for high-end devices and just want a phone which offers great music playback, calls & texts in a simple, comfortable easy to use package. The 5310 offers all of this and for the price of approximately £100 or under on Pay As You Go, you can’t really ask for much more than that.