Nokia 5230 Nuron (photos)

The Nokia 5230 Nuron will be available from T-Mobile on March 24, 2010, for $69.99 with a two-year contract.

Nokia preloads the Nuron with Ovi Maps, so that you get maps for the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, voice-guided navigation, Lonely Planet city guides, and more--all included in the price of the phone. It's also the first smartphone from a U.S. carrier to come preloaded with the Ovi Store.

To keep the phone's cost down, Nokia left a few features off the Nuron, including Wi-Fi and a higher-end camera.

The Nokia 5230 Nuron shares a number of design similarities as the Nokia 5800 series, including the Navigation Edition model pictured here.

The Nuron measures 4.37 inches tall by 2.03 inches wide by 0.61 inch thick and weighs 3.98 ounces. It's a compact and lightweight handset, but the plastic battery cover makes it feel a bit slick.

The smartphone has a 3.2-inch resistive touch screen with a 640x360-pixel resolution and support for up to 16.7 million colors.

The display has a built-in accelerometer so you get both an onscreen portrait and landscape keyboard. However, the screen's smaller size makes typing on the keyboard feel a bit cramped and we wish the screen was capacitive instead of resistive since the latter isn't as sensitive to touch as we like.

Below the display are the Talk and End keys, and a main menu button.

The right side of the phone has a volume rocker, a lock switch, and a camera activation-capture button.

On top of the device, you'll find a Micro-USB port, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a power connector, and a power button.

The Nuron's 2-megapixel camera is a step down from the Nokia 5800's 3.2-megapixel camera. However, it offers 3x digital zoom, video recording capabilities, and editing options.

With its lower camera, the Nuron's photo quality was just mediocre. Its colors were a bit washed out and its pictures were slightly hazy. However, its video quality was pretty decent.