Nokia 6303 Classic Review

Many smartphone owners have to carry two phones around for work and personal reasons, and this can lead to confusion as to which is the best device for what task. I have a contract paid for by my employer and so need a practical phone with decent battery life, good speakerphone quality and robustness in the face of bad treatment from its owner.

My Sony Ericsson K800i recently suffered at my hands and eventually gave up the ghost by losing signal after yet another drop to a hard surface. It has performed sterlingly well over the past few years (unlike the more recent Sony Ericssons I have tried) but sadly the time has come to wave goodbye and try something new. Nokia always pops into my head first when I think about standard mobile phones delivering good voice quality, speed of use and a long battery life and so I dropped the money for a Nokia 6303 which seemed to tick all of the boxes for me.

In the box

Contents: Nokia 6303- Battery (BL-5CT)- Stereo Headset (WH-102)- microSD memory card- Data Cable (CA-101)- Mains Charger (AC-8)- User Guide.

A 1GB microSDHC card is included which is better than nothing I guess alongside some terrible Nokia headphones (no surprise there then) and a data cable which is incredibly short. You don’t always get data cables with budget phones, but that does not excuse having one so short that it can only be used from a PC which is setup on top of a desk, and not below.

The rest is fairly standard and not worth spending time on, but you will need to buy a case and screen protector if you tend to bash your phones around a bit. Having said that, the packaged protector on the screen is almost invisible and I still haven’t taken mine off yet.

First Impressions

The first 6303 I got was faulty, it kept turning itself off and was unresponsive to button presses, and so I quickly exchanged it for a working one. This did not put me off because it was obvious from the start that this phone is designed well and perfect for people who just need to call and text the majority of the time.

In the hand it feels sublime and seems to fit every finger and thumb perfectly. It feels light, but has a weighty quality mainly thanks to the stainless steel casing, and just looks and feels good from every angle.

Battery

The expectations of this battery are high given it is one of the main features listed by Nokia and despite its relative paucity in capacity, it truly delivers. After 3 days and 3.5 hours of phone calls in an out, the battery meter is still at half way. Seriously impressive.

Screen

The screen is a surprise. Nokia has managed to keep a similar size to the Nokia 6300, but move the keys down to create a larger screen. The brightness and clarity in bright sunshine makes for a practical viewer that is useable in all conditions.

Keys

The larger screen should make for smaller buttons, but these work really well and the phone does feel balanced. It looks as though it would be top heavy, but when texting everything feels right. The navigation key is as good as could be hoped for and the call start/end keys and menu keys could be better- they are joined to produce two functions per key which is not easy at first, but I can forgive because the rest of the keys work so well.

General Performance

This phone is running the S40 operating system and thus requires little memory and in theory a small processor to run. General performance is very good and feels snappy, but navigating to apps and games on an expansion card can be slightly tardy. I found myself watching the bar fill up across the screen a few times and this was a shame because otherwise performance is very good.

Call Quality / Signal Strength

Call quality is blindingly good when used next to the ear. The volume is very loud when set up high, but I noticed little distortion even at high levels. The speakerphone is clear, but could be a little louder. It is obviously difficult to produce a ‘big’ sound from a small phone, but I have heard better on the speakerphone side in similar sized phones.

Signal quality is also very good for standard voice and data. There was a full connection everywhere I went, but without 3G on board there is little that should go wrong on any of the UK networks.

Camera

The 3.2MP auto focus, 4 x digital zoom and dual LED flash led me to expect a decent picture taking experience, but I was so wrong. The above are just numbers on a specification sheet because in the real world this camera is bad. When I say bad, I mean truly awful and is barely worth including. If it were quoted as a 1.3MP camera with fixed focus I could understand the performance, but these specifications are in opposition to what Nokia has actually fitted into the 6303. The auto focus focuses on nothing, it takes forever for a picture to be saved and the video capture quality is also not worthy. Moving on…

Entertainment

Video playback is quite reasonable given the screen size and in landscape I actually managed to watch 30 minutes of a film quite easily. There were no jumps or skips and even though this is no match for a proper mobile video player like a Touch Pro2 or iPhone, it works better than expected.

Music playback is also poor and I could not use my own headphones (they come back as unsupported) and this is a shame because the included headphones are so dreadfully poor. Imagine visiting an outdoor market where one of the stores sells knock off headphones for 75p- these are worse… I didn’t get a chance to test the 6303 with proper headphones, so my judgement may be limited in this area.

Extras

There are some free games included; Bounce Tales (which is very sweet), Brain Champion, City Bloxx, Sudoku, Tetris Pop and The Sims 3. These are nice extras which offer a glimpse of what is possible on an S40 powered phone. Bounce Tales is particularly good fun and very well implemented.

Applications include Converter, Flickr, Messenger, My Nokia, Opera Mini, Search, Share on Ovi, Size Converter and World Clock.

On the memory card you will find PC-Suite.exe which you can manually install when you connect the 6303 to a PC- a nice touch which negates the need to include a CD in the box.

There is also a voice recorder, equaliser, radio and a stereo widening option to improve the sound, which really does work.

Nokia Maps is also in the bundle, but there is no GPS antenna so you will need to use data to get around. It’s not ideal, but again good to see included.

The bundled software in the 6303 is fairly complete and more than you could reasonably expect in a £99 phone.

Conclusion

The design is near perfect with good buttons, a large screen and a subtlety of form which looks right in any place and any situation. The battery lasts forever, the screen is clear in all conditions, the voice quality is as good as any other phone and it can be had for under £140.

There is almost nothing wrong with the Nokia 6303, and more importantly almost everything feels exceptionally right. Now and then a phone is built that simply does the most important things well and in the case of the 6303, it does it all with style and is a huge bargain at its current price point. Only the Nokia 6700 looming on the horizon could be a match for it. It may not be a smartphone, but it is a very smart phone which suits my needs perfectly…

Available from Clove for £134.55.