Nokia 5200

The Nokia 5200 is a tri-band (850, 1900, and 1800 MHz) slider phone and is presently offered on both Fido and 7-11. It’s a bit cheaper at 7-11, selling for just $150, but you can get it at Fido (with no contract) for $200. It offers an MP3 player with an included 1 GB MicroSD card (which may be replaced with up to a 2 GB card). It also supports A2DP Bluetooth stereo headsets.


Tests were made of RF performance at the usual Hall of Shame over at Square One shopping mall. I compared the ability to pull in a signal during a call against a Nokia E51 (which I was also reviewing at the time) and I found it to have excellent RF qualities. Both phones performed almost identically, and so by extension the 5520 also has excellent RF sensitivity. In other words, it’s as good as you’re presently going to get at pulling in a really weak signal.


Note that the 5200 supports only standard GSM, while the E51 also supports UMTS. The comparisons noted above were made with the E51 switched to standard GSM mode. The overall incoming tonal balance isn’t bad compared to many phones I’d tested (including a number of high-end Nokia models), but at the same time it falls short of some of the better-sounding models out there (including my still-current Motorola i880 on Telus Mike).


The tone of incoming audio is a little harsh, but not enough to make you want to yank the phone from your ear or turn down the volume until you can’t hear it. I was a little disappoint in this aspect of the phone, in that it seems to add a bit of distortion to the sound that isn’t there when I made calls to identical sources with other GSM phones (including my ancient Nokia 6310i). The distortion isn’t particularly noticeable under day-to-day use however, but Nokia could have done better.