My experiences with Nokia 5230 Nuron (Tmobile branded) on Tmobile USA

I have recently purchased two new phones. I wanted something I could tether with, must be 3g, but I didn't want to pay a fortune. I looked at many deals and ended after a long search on the Nokia 5230 Nuron.

The phone runs 3g on the 10$ unlimited data plan, it has GPS with a fast fix, usually under 15-20 seconds. No wifi. I installed Opera Mobile, putty, youtube works great, google maps with voice control. "Find Taco Bell" Running mame, with a BGP100 bluetooth gamepad, fits nicely with the 5230. The Nokia su-8w keyboard works also if you really need to bang out some long emails. I can take video and pictures and post to facebook with one button which I use to post family pictures. (took some time to get working)

Drivers for both the BGP100 and Nokia were hard to come by, but I eventually got both. I used the Nokia driver for the S60v3 and it worked fine, but it did not say this anywhere, not sure why?

I was unhappy with the phone interface, or I should say, I liked the Nokia 5230 better than the Nuron Tmobile branded version. It has a contacts and music control on home screen. I decided to order two unlocked Nokia 5230's from Newegg and return the tmobile version.

I received the Nokia direct 5230's and was soon disappointed, they would not do 3G. I was getting edge speeds about .15-.19Mbps, on the Nuron I was getting .86-.99Mbps on the speed tests tethered via bluetooth to my Linux Laptop (CENTOS).

Additionally the Nokia (NON-Tmobile version) required the 25$ a month plan instead of the 10$ plan. However if you use the 10$ plan and change your APN to internet2.voicestream.com instead of epc.tmobile.com it works fine. I called tmobile and they said this was fine to use that APN on the 10$ plan. However contacts app and the music player did not make up for the lack of 3g working. I tried all the settings but could not get better speeds. I am sending the phones back to Newegg, and I lost 25$ on restocking fee on one phone and the return shipping. If I would have read clearer I would have seen ATT 3g only. Oh well, I have paid much more for my stupidity. I would say its a great phone for ATT, but I think they charge 30$ for data

There is not a ton of apps, well, I only look at free apps, but its a nice low end smartphone.

It runs Symbian OS and I am overall very pleased with the phone.

I bought the phones outright for 179$ a piece from tmobile and saved 20$ per month on my plan. so I was able to lower my monthly payment by 20$ per month, changed my plan to have more minutes, with unlimited texting on 3 phones, and unlimited web on 2 phones. The phone was 69$ on 2 year contract, but my plan would be 20$ more per month, so paying for it upfront makes sense.

Anyway, overall on a scale from 1-10, I give this a 9 for price / performance. The phone has its quirks and shows the NOKIA overall lack of QA and conformity.

I used to own a Nokia 6682 and I swore I would never own another Nokia phone. However this feature rich gem is a diamond in the rough.

What amazes me is Nokia could actually polish this up and make a really amazing phone at a cheap price. Although I think they are more interested in selling 500-800$ phones.


Anyway, my two cents, I thought might be worth sharing

Oh and before I go, one more thing I must mention, I hate the freaking OVI store. Slow to search on phone, hard to search on a computer. Overall stupid interfaces with that don't work well either on the phone or on the computer.

And here, most people claim Nokia is more interested in low-cost, emerging markets devices, than in designing a proper flagship.



Ofc, none of it is true, for the most part.

Perhaps the 5230 could be considered a device to bring smartphone features to emerging markets at affordable prices.

@penguinbait

Can you elaborate how to tether nuron to your PC box via bluetooth?

Thanks!

On CENTOS I used Network manager along with blueman. On Windows the nokia pc suite allows you to do this.

For CENTOS
You use blueman and pair to the device. Connect to the device. Select dial-up networking. Next go to Network manager and create a new mobile broadband connection. You can create the connection anytime, however it will only be available to connect to from network manager when you have connected via blueman and selected dial up networking.

For windows just install the Nokia software and click the connection button, I believe it will walk you through pairing the device and then get you online.

Obviously you need bluetooth on your computer, and you need to enable bluetooth on the phone. I believe I also had a problem under CENTOS where I had to have the phone and the computer authorized for auto connection. If not, no matter how fast I could answer "yes" it would fail.

I was quite happy with the outcome.