Best middle class mobile phone

I recently bought this middle class mobile phone from Nokia , and decided to write a hub on it. Since Nokia has anounced this phone I was surprized too see it`s very low price comparing to it`s functions.

The Nokia 6300 is a sophisticated compact phone with smart stainless steel covers and a glossy black finish. This neat camera phone has a 2 megapixel camera with 8x digital zoom, and uses a 240 x 320 resolution screen with up to 16 million colours. The Nokia 6300 is also a music player supporting MP3, MP4, AAC, AAC+ and eAAC+ and has a FM stereo radio with Visual Radio. The Nokia 6300 is a Tri band phone with EDGE, GPRS and Bluetooth. It comes with 7.8 MB internal user memory which can be expanded up to 2GB using a microSD card.

I was also very surprised at first to see how popular the Nokia 6300 became in such a short amount of time. This unassuming squashed brick of a phone doesn't exactly look flashy from the blown up photos on websites, but when you hold and use the Nokia 6300 mobile phone, you'll quickly understand it's popularity.

At just 106.4 x 43.6 x 11.7 mm this is a neat, and comfortably small phone. The thickness especially is enough to make it feel sturdy in your hand but thin enough to fit comfortably in your trouser pocket or get appropriately lost in your oversized handbag. The 6300 weighs in at just 91g. Nokia have tagged the phone as 'Simply Beautiful'. Despite it's rectangle shape the corners and edges are still smoothly curved and the stainless steel cover gives it an impressive shine. There is beauty in its simplicity, but then again calling it beautiful in comparison to the newer Samsung slider models like the G600 is a bit of a stretch. But then this phone is about usability accompanied by looks, not the other way around. The only unimpressive thing about the shell design is the battery cover which did not go on or off very easily.

The keypad is in the standard Nokia layout which, even 4 years after ceasing to use a Nokia phone, we found easy and reliable to use. The keys are easy to press but still give that responsive feel not available with touch sensitive keys, that allows for faster dialling and texting without watching what you're doing. Above the keypad is a menu button surrounded by a four way directional button. Having the select button separate from the direction buttons is a definite improvement on Sony Ericsson's joysticks (where you can end up selecting options involuntarily whilst scrolling through a menu) but the direction buttons aren't always that easy to press accurately if you're not watching what you're doing. Above it is the Nokia 6300's good sized 2 inch TFT screen that displays 240 x 320 pixels.

The 6300 has a number of very good music features considering its price. It has an FM radio that can only be used with Nokia's own headphones, but these are generally supplied with the handset. It also has a media player that can play videos and music files which you can either download using the phone's web browser, or by transferring them from your computer using a USB cable. The sound output was just as good as any other compact MP3 player, and you can also use the loudspeaker instead of headphones, with a surprisingly good sound quality, not that that will stop it from annoying everyone else on the bus. It's also very easy to use other phone features whilst listening to music, which of course stops as soon as you receive a call. The phone can play all of the following file types: MP3, MP4, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, H.263, H.264.

Another surprise with this phone is the web browsing experience. It's not 3G but is GPRS and EDGE compatible. Considering that, the speed of browsing was good when compared with other non-3G phones, presumably due to a fast rendering engine in the web browser. You can view full size websites, not just those made specifically for small mobile phone screens, although there is a lot of scrolling involved. The email software is also easy to use, especially for the popular Gmail and Yahoo email accounts.

The standard features of the Nokia 6300 still deserve a brief mention, including a simple organiser with a calendar, to-do list and notepad. The media player can handle voice recording and the messaging tool can send SMS, MMS and Nokia Xpress audio messages. It has bluetooth that can be used with bluetooth headphones as well as other devices, and USB connectivity. The call quality is near perfect with almost no background noise. Although it may not stand up to the likes of the business favourite the 6230i, Nokia are quoting a battery life of 3.5 hours of talktime or up to 14.5 days standby with is pretty good.

Best Nokia mobile phone

Best budget phone