Nokia 5140 Sascha Segan Icon By Sascha Segan December 1, 2004 3:08PM EST Editors' Rating: 3.00 good Nokia 5140 View All 14 Photos in Gallery MSRP $249.99 Pros Small and rugged. Unique outdoorsy features. Stellar 9-hour battery life. Cons Push-to-talk and IM functions don't work yet. Buttons can be hard to press. Bottom Line The Nokia 5140 is not exactly a push-to-talk walkie-talkie phone (à la Nextel), at least not yet. But it's the closest you can get on a GSM network, and its rugged nature will appeal to backyard Indiana Joneses. Nokia faces off against Nextel with the new Nokia 5140, a Swiss Army knife of a phone that can do everything but light your campfire. Alas, this cool phone is still a bit of a work in progress: The phone hardware supports push-to-talk walkie-talkie features—but we we're still waiting for a U.S. GSM carrier to enable them. As a phone, the 5140 is a rugged, splashproof (but not submersible) device that fits easily in a pocket. We dropped it several times and loosened the case slightly, but it snapped right back together with no harm done. The rubbery, close-together buttons are well marked, but can be hard to press if you have large fingers. And the small screen is difficult to read with the backlight off. Fortunately, pressing any button activates the backlight. The speaker and speakerphone are quite loud. On our tests, the battery delivered just over 9 hours of talk time. The flashless VGA camera did okay on our simulated-daylight tests. Pictures tended toward blue, and we saw jaggy diagonal lines, but images were relatively sharp, clear, and free of excess noise. (See our camera phone gallery to compare the 5140 with other VGA camera phones.) You can hook the phone up to your laptop with a USB cable ($35) to sync addresses and calendar entries and to use the 5140 as an EDGE modem on the Cingular network. Unique, outdoorsy features set this phone apart from your everyday phone. The 5140 sports a compass (excellent), a bubble level (useful), a flashlight (decent), a thermometer (frequently wrong), a decibel meter (why?), and an FM radio (which works well, but only with the wired headset plugged in to use as an antenna). There's also a great little "fitness coach" application built in, which lets you create an exercise plan you keep on your phone. There's also a built-in bicycle-racing game. Active-lifestyle accessories, including a slide-on GPS with route-tracking software and a pedometer that hooks up to the fitness application, are coming early next year. The 5140 also has a bunch of intriguing features we couldn't use. As we mentioned, the push-to-talk abilities are not yet supported by any U.S. GSM carrier. And the phone supports IM, but you won't be able to configure the IM application until the phone is officially picked up by a carrier. Nokia and various third-party vendors are selling the 5140 with plans from Cingular and T-Mobile. Only Cingular supports the EDGE high-speed modem, though. When it gets push-to-talk and GPS on board, the Nokia 5140 could be a compelling alternative for outdoors enthusiasts also looking at the Nextel i315 or i325. But note that GSM networks still don't cover some very rural areas in the U.S., and neither does Nextel; for true off-roading, you need a phone with an analog band like the Nokia 6015i (Verizon) or the Nokia 3205 (Sprint). With that issue in mind, we'd rate the 5140 as a better bet for backyard warriors than for true trailblazers. Benchmarks: Jbenchmark 1: 730 JBenchmark 2: 34 BatteryLife: 9 hours 7 minutes tested continuous talk time Bottom Line: The Nokia 5140 is not exactly a push-to-talk walkie-talkie phone (à la Nextel), at least not yet. But it's the closest you can get on a GSM network, and its rugged nature will appeal to backyard Indiana Joneses.