Nokia 6300 Review

The announcement of 6300 introduces Nokia into the market of the stylish slim phones, which has been dominated so far by Motorola and Samsung and their respective series- RAZR/SLVR and Ultra. The main characteristic of this phone is its appearance and its ‘feel’ at touch rather than the functionality of the E and N series smartphones. Despite its moderate price the latter is a high quality device relying on high-standard manufacturing and oriented towards customers who would never sacrifice the appeal of the exterior, but don’t really need E50 smartphone or the image-creating 8800, which is two- or threefold more expensive.

The phone set includes:

• Nokia 6300;
• A charger;
• Leather case;
• Stereo headphones;
• 128 Mb micro SD memory card;
• Software CD;
• Instruction manual.
  

The small leather case is elegant and adorned with graphic details, known from previous Nokia phones. It cannot be hung onto anything but simply contains the 6300 in order to safeguard the unit from scratching. At the beginning, the leather was rather tight and after inserting the phone in, it was quite difficult to pull it out.

Nokia 6300 is a classic monoblock featuring the neutral gray and black colors. Its appearance can be described by a single word – stylish. Details are made in such a way so that not to remind of the manufacturer’s mass production models, but of the rare 8800 instead. 6300 has the air of reliability and high quality about it. The black surface is a plastic, shiny and pleasant to touch; and the silver is stainless-steel metal. Quality is high and only the display, when pressed, creaks a little. Weight does not exceed the agreeable 91 grams and size, too, ranks it among the small phones. In spite of its SLVR-like thinness, it is very convenient and nice to operate with.

At the top of the front panel a two-inch display is located, featuring the eye-gratifying resolution of 240 x 320 pixels and reproducing up to 16 million colors. The display is bright enough to be distinctly readable at even strong sunshine; pictures are also easily viewed in detail due to the high resolution, not typical for its size.

Below it is the keyboard, consisting of software and navigation keys, and a 12-key numeric keypad. The software and the ‘answer/reject call’ ones are transparent and glass-like, equal in size. They require normal pressing strength and offer good tactile response. In between them is the navigation D-pad, which, no matter how small, has a precise response – soft and pleasant in the middle position. Though the 12 numeric keys are comparatively small and cramped to each other, they are very soft at pressing and have again very good tactile response. Despite the necessity to look while writing, because it is difficult to tell them apart at touch, writing on this keyboard is a pleasure. These and the software keys are blue-colored, while the two ‘receiver’ ones are respectively green and red.

The only regrettable impression about the phone is left by the sound volume control rocker, located on the right. It is very hard to feel, and displeasing and difficult to press. It is almost impossible to use it during conversation, when the phone is next to your head.

The on/off button is on the upper side and on the lower is the charging socket as well as the mini-USB slot for computer synchronization. The 2 megapixel camera lens is on the back panel.

Interface:
As a typical Nokia of the mid-level, the 6300 works under the manufacturer’s Series 40 operating system. It is standard software used by a lot more phones, for example 6131. As a whole, the customers perceive it as a logically ordered, good-looking and functional work medum. It can be personalized with themes, but the phone is supplied with one only. The home screen presents the normal system information with an additional option to visualize Active Standby, offering links and information on certain applications.

The main menu can be visualized as a list, tabs, a 3 x 3 grid with texts, or a 3 x 4 grid without ones. The icons are animated and their location – changeable.

Phonebook:
The contacts in the telephone book are visualized as a name list with a default large-size font (it can be altered in the Settings menu). The search is done thru direct text input, only by first name. The phone’s memory can accommodate up to 1000 contacts and each features numerous additional lines providing optional information – i.e. additional phone numbers and other information. Picture, melody, or even short video can be attached to a contact which is shown when that particular person is calling.

In the Organizer menu you will find the standard applications for this type of phone. Several kinds of notes for a certain day (hour) can be added trouble-free to the calendar. Apart from that there is a single alarm, which is set to go off on a particular days of the week. You have the capability to put down ordinary or to-do notes with 3 priorities. There are Stopwatch, Countdown Timer, and Advanced Capabilities Calculator at your disposal.

You can also use speaker-independent voice commands for pre-set applications and voice dialing of contacts. Though the system works, it does not boast high precision. In case the contact has been entered by first and second name, one has to make sure they pronounce BOTH names for the recognition to work.

6300 features 9 Mb of memory, which, however, can be increased by micro SD cards. The respective slot is located on the right under the battery lid. Still, they are hot-swappable – one can replace them without switching the phone off.

Messaging:

Apart from the options to compose standard text and multimedia messages, the Messages menu features also Multimedia Plus Message and Flash Message. You can also avail yourself of a mobile e-mail client and Instant Messenger.



Connectivity:

In our view, one of the principal shortcomings of Nokia 6300 is being solely a three-band GSM/EDGE 2G phone, which means it cannot operate properly on all continents. Nokia announced two modifications, one for America with 850 / 1800 / 1900 MHz and one for Europe at 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz support.

Locally the unit uses Bluetooth to connect to other devices, supporting the 2.0 version. Much to our regret, stereo sound reproduction is not available due to the lack of A2DP profile support. Computer connection is plausible thru a completely standard mini-USB cable. The set software enables easy information transfer from and to the phone.

Internet:

The built-in browser caused our utmost disappointment – it is only WAP, not HTML, and to use it for visualizing Internet pages in our opinion is nearly useless. It is rather obsolete and a pity that a QVGA resolution phone does not dispose of a real browser.

Camera:

The phone’s camera is a 2 megapixel one without a flash or automatic focus. It takes the very satisfactory 3 seconds to start, but taking pictures is itself quite slow: 8 seconds to record one at maximum resolution and after that you need almost as much (15 seconds in all) to be able to start over photographing. The interface is fairly simple, displaying only the resolution and the number of pictures left to take. In the Options menu one can pick color effects, white balance and night mode; there are 6 available levels of resolution and 3 for picture compression. Small videos, suitable for MMC only, can be recorded.

The photo quality is well below average compared to that of other phones’ 2 megapixel cameras. The camera is only usable at bright daylight in the open, but still the pictures do not have enough color saturation, contrast is low, and details – unclear. The lack of auto-focus is quite obvious.

Indoors, even at bright illumination, the photographs are extremely ‘noisy’, thus wiping out the little existing detail. The color-reproduction here is even weaker and more unreal. At a very low light taking pictures is outright impossible because of the lack of flash.

Music:
You can listen to MP3 and AAC format music by means of the built-in player. It can be filtered there by artist, album or style, as well as chosen from track-lists of the most popular and the newest songs on your phone. Seven equalizers are available for sound quality control. You can leave the player on the background level and do other things on the phone. If the active standby screen is on, you will see the song that is playing on it.

The loudspeaker sound is quite strong so that ring-tones are audible even in a noisy environment. In order to listen to music one can resort to headphones – the ones from the set will do. If you have higher requirements they can be replaced by better ones, which, however, will normally need a 2.5 mm to 3.5 mm adapter. At least these are readily available.

You have an FM radio at hand as well. Up to 20 radio stations with names can be memorized.It also supports multitasking and displays the station you are listening to at the active home screen.

Software:
The phone supports JAVA MIDP 2.0 but the manufacturer has installed only one application (on our version) – a Nokia animation and tones catalogue. There are no pre-loaded games, but these can be added subsequently.

Performance:
Based on Series 40, this ‘non-smart’ phone is enviably faster than its smart kin and its operation is very stable. As a phone it features the typically ‘Nokian’ high level: a strong signal reception and very good sound quality. Incoming you get clear sound with volume above the average, while the other side hears you also relatevely clear and very strong. About the only remark one can make is the slightly monotonous, yet clearly audible voice pitch. The speakerphone is also of very good quality and is usable, but as the phone speaker is on the back side, once you put it on a table, the voices will be lower and not so clear.

Conclusion:
Nokia 6300 is a fine phone. It is simply stylish, classical and high-quality; though, unfortunately, somewhat dull. It is definitely oriented towards a more ‘grown-up’ age group, rendering it inappropriate for young people. If we add its stable operation as a phone with quite a few functions to the good image, then the 6300 can definitely be said to come up to our expectations.