Nokia 5500 Sport made from old boots

The new Nokia 5500 Sport mobile phone sees Nokia getting all sporty on us, just in time for summer and the World Cup. According to Heikki Norta, Nokia’s Senior Vice President, “the Nokia 5500 Sport combines the passion and spirit of sports with the latest in mobile communications. It’s an ideal companion for an active, urban lifestyle.”

But is it? Or is it more just a mid-range mobile phone with the word ’sport’ attached to it to separate it from the million other mid-range phones? And why did Nokia decide to make it out of old boots?!

Why the Nokia 5500 ’sport’?

So what’s so sporty about the Nokia 5500 Sport? Well, looking closely at its features, it’s obviously been designed around an active lifestyle. In particular, it has a sports mode for when you’re being ‘active’ (i.e. running, or doing a Paula Radcliffe!), which lets you operate the main features of the phone without having to stop and take your eye off whatever it is you’re doing.

A single button serves to activate three dedicated modes – the sports mode, just mentioned, a communications mode, and a music mode. In sports mode, the Nokia 5500 Sport reads the status of your workout, allowing you to stay focused on the task, or the excercise, at hand. The integrated pedometer feature serves to monitor distance walked or calories burnt. The Nokia 5500 Sport also offers “text-to-speech” technology, which lets you tap the Nokia 5500 Sport and the message will be read out to you.

The Nokia 5500 Sport supports a multitude of different digital music formats and memory cards of up to 1GB (microSD), enabling it to hold approximately 750 songs.

Nokia 5500 and old boots

For extra durability, the Nokia 5500 Sport features an ergonomic stainless steel casing, complemented by a splash and dust resistant shell and rubber grips. It’s also engineered with materials used in the latest high performance running shoes, which apparently “make it look good on and off the court,” but in fact make it look more like a recycled old trainer!

You can see what Nokia have tried to do here – add a few touches of colour in the same material used in trainers to give their new Nokia 5500 Sport that ‘active’ look. But it’s a bit lame, and the yellow flashes are not a good look. The Nokia 5500 Sport does sound like a good mobile phone if you’re the sporty type, but leave the yellow alone!