The Symbian Belle-based Nokia 700 is on its way, and if you're a Nokia C5-03 user it represents a superb upgrade option that's just as pocket-friendly and comes with a long list of exciting new features to look forward to. Read on as we make the case for upgrading.
Nokia 700: 10 things you need to know
The Nokia 700 was announced as part of the three-strong Symbian Belle brigade announced at the end of last month as Nokia's latest update to its Symbian smartphone lineup.
We were expecting it to arrive some time before the end of the year but Nokia has revealed the Nokia 700 is already shipping and is set to go on sale as soon as next month. For Nokia C5-03 users looking to upgrade, it's certainly well worth considering as it's a brand new release that isn't going to break the bank and is similarly lightweight and portable.
In fact, while the Nokia C5-03 is certainly lightweight and is pleasantly compact too, the Nokia 700 is officially Nokia's smallest smartphone ever, coming in more than 4mm skinnier even if it does weigh all of 3g more at a nonetheless featherweight 96g.
The 3.2-inch 360 x 640-pixel touchscreen will certainly be familiar as it's exactly the same as the Nokia C5-03 packs itself, but that's where the similarities end as you'll be leaving behind a resistive TFT panel for the superb contrast and quality of a capacitive AMOLED touchscreen with Nokia's ClearBlack display technology on board.
You also go from virtually no internal memory to speak of to a 2GB quota of on-board storage before you start to rely on microSD card storage, and processor power has been boosted from the Nokia C5-03's 600MHz chip to a full 1GHz of on-board juice. On top of that you've got 720p high-definition video recording smarts too to go with the 5-megapixel camera.
And thanks to Symbian Belle, not only do you get Nokia's most advanced smartphone OS to date complete with the likes of six homescreens, free-form resizable widgets and a host of other on-board features, you also get the fantastic convenience of full NFC integration for easy wireless syncing with other handsets or Bluetooth accessories, not to mention the ability to tap into the growing network of NFC-based services starting to emerge in the wider mobile ecosystem.
For our money the Nokia 700 makes for a no-lose upgrade from the Nokia C5-03 in that it improves on the Symbian S60-based handset in every single sense.
That's not to say that the Nokia C5-03 doesn't have its merits, but Symbian Belle is so much of a step forward there's really no comparison, and of course the Nokia 700 is a great piece of hardware too if you're looking for decent performance and above-average features in a superbly compact package.