Design and Looks
Despite the fact that it includes many steel panels on the exterior design, the Nokia 6300 is a very slim and lightweight phone. What's equally surprising is that the 6300 is a very conservative looker. The rectangular bar consists of black and silver exteriors (silver-black model) where the silver parts are all made out of steel and the black portion out of glossy plastic. Both portions of the phone are sadly finger print magnets, so unless you don't mind wiping down your Nokia 6300 every now and then you might want to consider another handset in your search for a mobile phone.
The steel naturally adds to the strong build of the phone and gives users a strong feeling of confidence when toying with the phone. The front is composed of two parts; the display and the D-pad on an elevated plastic plane and the one piece keypad just below it. The back is much the same with the steel battery cover taking up almost a third of the phone and the plastic quarter at the top that houses the camera and the speakerphone grill.
Along the sides of the phone there isn't much except for a blue LED light that can be set to indicate missed events, a volume rocker, charging and 2.5mm audio jack port and surprisingly, a welcome miniUSB connector which a better alternative to the regular microUSB or pop-port connector that's available on most other phones.
The D-pad and the soft keys are very tactile and should offer users little problems when using them. The alphanumeric keypad too shares similar ergonomic response thanks to the big soft keys that make up the single block keypad.
Moving on, the phone's display is a large 2.0” screen that generates an amazing 16.7 million colours over a QVGA resolution. The screen is one of the best among Nokia and is perfectly legible even under bright sunlight. Unfortunately it feels like the screen could have been bigger if the D-pad/soft key unit did not take up so much space.
The phone is powered by the popular Nokia Series S40 user interface (UI). In this case, the UI is in its 3rd edition and promises users with a lot of interesting applications. Not least among which is the Active Standby seen on the home screen, which gives users instant access to the most frequently used applications or common applications in addition to one touch access to the phone's media features and the organizer. The UI may not offer Java multitasking but is sufficiently fast and responsive enough to run smoothly any one application at a time.
A novel feature of the phone that was relatively new when the phone first released is the voice dialing and voice commands function. With this it's possible to browse through menus or call contacts with only the simply press of the 'speak now' context button. What's more is that it does not require any pre-recording of voice labels.
The phone sports the old XpressMusic media player that was popular on the Nokia 5300 XpressMusic phone and was subsequently implemented in a number of other phones like the 3500 classic and this, the Nokia 6300. True to the XpressMusic trademark, the player offers support for a number of digital music formats and extensive sound settings including five equalizer presets and stereo widening effect. Unfortunately, this is not a dedicated music phone and the audio port is the unconventional 2.5mm one that's compatible only with Nokia headsets. Unless you can source an adapter for the standard 3.5mm pin, you're stuck with a sub-standard headset like the HS-47 that comes with the phone. Another not-so-practical option is to pair a Bluetooth headset with the phone as it supports A2DP profile; it's not practical given the phone's generally poor battery life and the battery-hungry Bluetooth profile.
XpressMusic also lends its name to the radio player which is nearly not as functional as the XpressMusic name would suggest. While there is automatic scanning of channels and Visual Radio support, strangely there is no RDS support which is more common and hence more useful than Visual Radio. Music can be played through the phone's loudspeaker that's at the back right next to the camera. Although not a stereo speaker set, the quality is quite good, moreover it does not get muffled when you place the phone on its back.
The phone's video player is a simple one that supports 3GP and MP4 formats, while it offers forward and rewind, the legends on the screen do not disappear completely. This coupled with the small screen estate mars the video-viewing experience this phone has to offer.
The phone sports a basic 2MP camera that's far from the best. It's inclusion in phones today is sometimes more of an obligation than a necessity. Since the Nokia 6300 isn't a dedicated camera phone, this is one of those phones with a 'lip-service' camera. This shooter is capable of only grainy images high on noise and low on accurate colour representation. Nevertheless the camera offers extensive settings such as white balance, three levels of image quality, various effects and PictBridge support, so you can print directly from phone without having to connect to the computer first. Videos aren't great either and are only fit for an occasional MMS.
Other goodies onboard the phone are Nokia Sensor (a Bluetooth application), a unit convertor, Presenter (a mobile-remote control for PC presentations), a voice recorder with a 60 minute recording length limit, stopwatch, countdown timer, calculator, task manager and calendar.
And for the apps that did not make it into the phone and are meant for PC, Nokia has provided users filled with the goods in the PC Suite CD-ROM that comes bundled with the phone. The software includes Adobe Photoshop Album (to help patch up the poor 2MP photos) and Nokia Wireless Presenter, which must be installed on the computer playing the presentation for total mobile control.
Although a spirited performer in its youth, the Nokia 6300 is becoming really old. Yet, thanks to the reduced selling price and modest feature-set, there are people out there who would still fall for the charms of this aging yet timeless beauty.
Features
- Steel body casing and classic design
- 2.0” screen with 16M colours and QVGA resolution
- 2MP fixed focus camera
- Standard miniUSB connector
- Bluetooth with A2DP profile
- Nokia Presenter application - control PC presentations from phone
- PictBridge support
- Voice-control and voice dialing
- XpressMusic media player
Accessories
- Nokia Stereo Headset HS-47 (available with phone)
- Pouch (available with phone)
- Nokia Bluetooth Headset BH-700
