Nokia 6300 Review

Overall Rating

- slim, chiche
- impressive loudspeaker
- high-performing screen
- picture quality is very good
- expandable memory (512MB microSD card included as standard)

- poor onboard memory capacity
- very pathetic battery life
- vibration facility not very strong

The Nokia 6300 is still a very popular contendor in the mid-range mobile phone market, although it's almost two years old. It's immense popularity is what made me buy it.

The phone itself looks incredible. It's very stylish and beautiful - very classy and suitable if you want to do a bit of showing-off. The sleek 'Nokia' logos are great finishing touches.

Start-up time is okay. After the tidy Nokia welcome opening theme (featuring the "connecting hands" trademark), whether you skip the welcome or not, you're subjected to a blank white screen for a couple of seconds. That's not irritating, you might think, but it was when I was desperate to ring the police to report a fire at the local park. Oh well, the phone isn't going to be perfect. Maybe I should've been normal and have already had the phone switched on.

Most mobile phones now function also as MP3 players. Hence the Nokia 6300 isn't an exception. What I really like about the player on this phone is the ability to listen to music files through the very impressive loudspeaker. Sound on it is very clarified and isn't as lacking in bass as you'd expect for such a small speaker.

The screen is very, very bright and is viewable right up to the brightest of sunlight conditions.

Onboard memory capacity is dire, but this is completely overcome by the fact that the phone comes supplied with a 512MB microSD card which can be upgraded to an even higher capacity storage card in the future.

The biggest disadvantage of using this phone is its battery life. One charge lasts me just one day when I send about 20 texts per day and take a photo or two, which isn't at all good. It's annoying that I have to charge the battery every night but at least each charge is suitable for 16 hours or so.

The vibration feature isn't very strong. On many occasions, I've had the phone on silent in my pocket and never realised that I've received texts or phonecalls because the vibrating has been to pathetic.

Overall, though, this phone is brilliant. The enormous let-down is the battery life. I live in hope that Nokia will develop a new battery for the phone that can be purchased to give longer battery life, but it won't be fair that I'll have to pay extra.