Nokia 500

A landmark device in two ways, the Nokia 500 is Nokia's first 1GHz Symbian phone, and it is also the first handset to ditch Nokia's hopelessly awful naming system to come up with something a little more flexible.

Before we look at the phone, let's look at the name. No longer will we be baffled by having completely different phones with the same name, such as the C3 messaging phone and the C3 Touch and Type. The number on future Nokia handsets will indicate just where they are in the range, from 100 to 999, so the Nokia 500 sits pretty much slap bang in the middle of Nokia's line-up, priced at €150 before tax and subsidy.

The Nokia 500 follows a pretty familiar pattern when it comes to the hardware. There's a 3.2" 360 x 640 pixel display, a 5 megapixel camera on the back and 3.5G and WiFi, GPS and an FM radio plus Bluetooth and USB connectivity.

The operating system is the latest version of Symbian called "Anna", which includes free navigation and mapping software, a comprehensive multimedia player and all the usual applications you would expect to find on a smartphone.

Nokia 500 Under the hood, the Nokia 500 sports a 1GHz CPU, which is very fast for a device in this price range. Combine this with the fact that Symbian is a very efficient operating system when it comes to resources, and it is quite likely that the Nokia 500 will be a little speed demon when it comes to gaming, multimedia and web surfing.

Nokia 500 Compared to high-end smartphones, the screen size is pretty modest. The camera is a bit poor when it comes to making video clips, with 15 fps VGA resolution capture. But compared with similarly priced Android devices, the Nokia 500 actually looks pretty good, especially with the pin-sharp display and speedy processor. What the Nokia 500 lacks is Android's application library, but even so there are plenty of applications available.
There are two colours of Nokia 500 coming - black and white, but there are a variety of large, colourful battery covers available including two covers in the box. Available colours at launch include black, orange, khaki, purple, coral red and azure blue with green, pink and dark silver available later.

This is quite lightweight for a smartphone, coming in at 93 grams and measuring 111 x 54 x 14mm. Nokia say that the 500 should get up to 5 hours talktime and 18 days standby time from its 1110 mAh battery.