My Nokia 6300 review:

[Treatz]

I've been using the nokia 6300 now for a solid 2 weeks running the Fido retail SW 4.71 version and then swapping out to the generic Nokia SW 4.71

How does the unit hold out in terms of my usage and testing?>

Quick Specs
The Nokia 6300b is comprised of:
*Triband EDGE/GPRS operation for the Americas (1900/1800/850) Class 10 Device
*Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP support
*QVGA 240x320 screen with 262k colours
*2.0 mpix camera with 8x digital zoom
*Vid recording
*Music player supporting MP3, Midi, AAC, AAC+, enhanced AAC+, and WMA formats
*FM stereo radio
*MicroSD hot swap memory card with support for up to 2 GB memory (128 packaged)
*Metal back cover and accents throughout


Reception:
First and foremost the phone worked. It worked well. Let's be honest though, Nokia is knows for making good quality phones that are stellar in the RF department and the 6300 is no exception to this rule. In my daily travels in and throughout MADSEEG land the 6300 was a good phone to have. It worked well and didn't complain much. Over the road performance was decent but still a bit intrusive at times

The 6300 handled my driving* test with ease and basically laughed off the cantina test. Then again most phones with 850 tend to laugh off the cantina as long as they're half decent.

*The drive by test is:
Yonge and 16th, east on 16th to woodbine. North on woodbine to 19th. West on 19th to Yonge. North on Yonge to Bloomington. East on bloomington to Bayview.
South on bayview to Stouffville sideroad. East on Stoufville sideroad to Leslie and Leslie back to the Hill

Sound Quality
Incoming
the incoming sound quality of the 6300 is very good. It's loud enough for my liking but a bit to much trebble at the same time as well. The phone had very clean audio and no detectable transmitter buzz during normal use. The only time I was able to pick up some transmitter buzz in the earpiece was in the cantina test, and to be heard I had to concentrate in complete silence so it shouldn't be a big concern.

Outgoing
The outgoing audio of the 6300 was equally good. The 6300 also has the voice clarity feature similar to that of the 5300 which will essentially focus on your voice and not the background noise in loud enviroments. The trade off however is that when voice clarity is active you will sound a bit digitized. The phone will actually indicitate when it's using voice clarity buy a wavy line icon as well which i found a nice feature.

Volume
one thing I'd like to also comment on is the ringtone volume of the 6300 was very good. For such a small phone it played MP3's as ringtones or music quite loudly and cleanly

Camera
The Nokia 6300 features a 2.0 mpix camera with no autofocus.
It's there for your quick spur of the moment shots and for MMS fun

still shots
The camera itself can take pics in the following resolutions:
*1600x1200
*1280x960
*800x600
*640x480
*320x240
*160x120

here are the pictures attached as well:








such excellent driving skills:


oh oh. 94 octane + Jenna = disaster to speed limits!


StarBUNKS


Sunny dayyyyyyssss


Nice clean filter for my Jenna




The 6300 features a Image Sequence option where it will snap 5 shots. Similar to SE's best shot option where it'll take 9 shots and you pick the best one

The 6300's camera has a few effects as well
in the Effects menu you have your standard greyscale/sepia/negative/solarize and a new one, false colours. All are fun add on's you can use for your camera shots

Video
The 6300 will also record video
standard issue here really as the 2 vid sizes are 176x144 or 128x96.

External Memory
The Nokia 6300 from Fido comes nicely packaged with a 512meg MicroSD card
The memory card itself is just under the battery cover but not under the battery so you can get at it easily. Although, when you connect the phone via USB to a PC the throughput is very fast so there's really no reason to take it out anyway to be honest. I never did





Connectivity
The 6300 has quite a few connectivity options. All that's lacking is IR>

USB Cable
When using the USB cable as a connectivity options it's straightforward and ridiculously easy.

When you insert the cable you're prompted with 3 options:
Nokia mode
Printing and Media
Data Storage

Nokia Mode is the profile you'll need to select when you want to connect to nokia's PCSuite program, which is completely free and really good.
Printing and Media is a Profile which will grant you access to the phone and memory card to browse the media and copy/print that media as needed.
Data Storage is pretty straightforward. It makes the nokia phone a virtual drive allowing you to drag and drop files to and from the Nokia 6300 and a PC

The best part of the nokia connectivity options is that regardless of what you choose, the phone always stays online in case calls/sms/mms come in

The only downside is that the USB port doesn't charge the phone.. so while it's connected to the PC it won't get any juice oddly enough.

the Nokia 6300 is a USB 2.0 device so transfers are fast and painless. Especially if you're into music. Drop all the songs into the Media card into whatever folder you select and then launch the player and update it so it'll scan in your new media. Done. Painless.

Bluetooth
the Bluetooth system on the 5300 is quite good. It has excellant range and amazing throughput. It's also straightforward and easy to opperate.

Visibility:
You have 3 visibility settings as well. Shown to all, Temporary visibility and Hidden.
the Temporaty visibility has a window of 2 minutes as well.

Data Throughput
Amazingly enough, i was getting some amazing throughput on the 6300's bluetooth. From my PC to the 6300 i was getting speeds of 217kb/s where the average fast phone is around 40kb/s. That's really fast. Here's a Vid of this baby motoring as well for you to check out.

I was gonna shoot a new vid but the 6300 is just as fast as the 5300 so here's that vid anyway:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhA-_0Ke1ZI

A2DP
The Nokia music player itself has A2DP and it works well. With an BH-601 headset connected to it like the BH-601 (review coming shortly) the phone is smart enough to automatically funnel songs to the headset itself instead of you having to start the music, then select "play via Bluetooth".

memory card
I already touched about the memory card above, but that in itself is another connectivity option for those of you who like poping out the card and putting it into a card reader. Although, with the speed of the USB 2.0 connection or even BT i dont' forsee a reason for doign this INMO

Nokia itself claims up to 2 gig of external memory card storage.
I don't have a 2 gig MicroSD card handy to test that but i don't see it being a problem

Aesthetics
Clearly the 6300 is a finely crafted phone. Metal backplate, metal front housing and chrome accents throughout. What attracted me to the 6300 was it's look.

The fit and finish of the 6300 is excellent. It's a very solidly built phone.











Screen
The screen on the 6300 is excellent. It has rich colour and is reflective in the sun and is easily visible in direct sunlight unless you're using a dark theme then it gets a bit tougher to see.

the screen is a QVGA unit comin in at 320x240.




Keys
The keypad on the 6300 is excellent.
it was easy to use, provided just enough of a tactile feedback and allowd me to fly over it when SMSing and doing various other functions on the phone.





Sizing
The 6300 is a very nicely sized phone. It's confortable to hold and use, and is perfect for pockets.












OS
The phone itself is a series 40 3rd edition. A familliar interface that works very quickly and is stable.

Media
My only issue with this OS is that you can't skip to a letter in your media.
For example:

in Ringtones you have 200 tones and you want to jump right to Hello, so logically you should be able to press 4 twice for H and skip right to the H's. You can't do this on the OS and you're scrolling for a while

You can sort by date however, which alleviates some of the issue since you're usually going to get your newest ringtones/wallpapers/themes first anyway so you can do it that way.

Themes
the other issue i have with the OS is themes.
while I'm a big fan of themes what I don't like is that the themes that have ringtones built in will swap out your set tones. I can see some themes work better with certian tones. A-TEAM with the theme song, for example. I feel that the option sould be presented like the SE implementation where it asks you "use theme tone / message tone" in which you can say NO if you really don't want to have the phone change to "Nokia tone" when you set the classic nokia theme


Battery
Unfortunately, as excellent as this phone was it's kryptonite was battery life. When directly compared with my W810 the 6300 had to be charged twice daily for my needs. I would take it off the charger at 9am, use the phone for wap / sms and calls which can be characterized as heavy use. By 5pm I would have to plug the phone in again to ensure it made it through the evening of the same usage. Even then there'd be times that the phone would start squaking the low battery alert around 11pm.

One of the reasons I feel, for this batter life is that the nokia's don't have a brighness setting. You can't dial the screen down at all. It's brightness is set to max, all the time. Furthermore, there are times that the phone just seems to sit with the screen on, unnecessarily. For example> when I engage the keylock and put the phone down it takes a full minute for the screen to completely shut off.

You can get around this by locking the keys and pressind end right after. This will shut the screen off but i feel it's an extra step that isn't needed

If i just put the phone down and don't lock the keys it takes the same full minute for the screen to shut off as well.

So clearly, if you get this phone go into the settings and CHANGE THAT down to 10 seconds or something a lot more reasonable. You don't need it lit up for a full minute after you lock it. it'll still be lit, but half power.

SMS
The SMS system on the nokia is very good. I personally still prefer SE's use of the # key for space so this way you can save alpha numeric strings but nokia has improved it's T9 system. Namely, custom words will actually cycle up on the top of the list based on usage. Huartz, for example, would come up right away after a few usages of that word. This is a lot better then it used to be when you were mashing * repeatedly to get your word.

Voice Dialing
The 6300 also has independant voice dialing, similar to voicesignal. The similarities end there though because it never works and i stopped trying to use it

PRO's
*Huge screen
*Brilliant colour quality
*Excellent Fit and Finish
*Excellent build quality
*Very attractive design
*Solid reliable UI
*Improvements to Nokia T9
*A2DP
*2.0Mpix cam takes ok shots
*Loud earpiece
*Loud MP3 ringers
*Good RF

CON's
*Battery life
*lack of email client in Fido SW
*USB port doesnt' juice the phone while plugged in
*can't hop to letter in media
*Themes don't allow you to keep current tones

Final Thoughts
In closing, i throughly enjoyed the 6300. I can see this being a very strong seller for Fido clients. At $100.00 on a 3 year term it's quite attractive to the buyers who perfer bar phones. If not the 6131 on fido @ $25.00 is equally impressive at this current point in time.

For many of you this phone will work. I'm an exception to the rule and my usage is quite heavy and for this reason the 6300 isn't for me. However, medium to light usage phone clients should have no qualms about this phone and be able to use it without revervation. I would definately recommend a car lighter adaptor though.

Another thing you will definately want to consider is flashing it generic using NSS or one of the marketplace advertisers here. Doing so enables MP3 Ringtones, obviously, but on top of that you'll get access to a decent Email app that even has SSL security and works fairly well.

[JustinCredible]

I agree with pretty much everything you posted above. Great phone overall.

[onlySE]

Good stuff man!!..!now how about a nice review on the S500 SE

[MaGNuS_Z]

Great review!

Does the phone supports the AVRCP bluetooth profile in addition of A2DP? phonearena.com doesn't list AVRCP... Because if it's true it is kinda lame that you have to use the phone to pause/skip tracks.

thanks

[Treatz]

Great review!

Does the phone supports the AVRCP bluetooth profile in addition of A2DP? phonearena.com doesn't list AVRCP... Because if it's true it is kinda lame that you have to use the phone to pause/skip tracks.

thanks

Oh yes, that is covered
I was able to skip tracks and pause them using the headset or a BT car radio that had A2DP

[MaGNuS_Z]

Oh yes, that is covered
I was able to skip tracks and pause them using the headset or a BT car radio that had A2DP

Nice. It would have been a total turn off for me otherwise.


Another question related to bluetooth, does it support syncing (calendar, todos, contacts) over bluetooth? I mean without installing any special Nokia software or drivers (like the Sony Ericsson phones).

thanks again

[reedacus25]

compared to a 6131 how would you compare the reception? i am looking for an upgrade to my 6131 (tired of the flip, firmware problems, becoming worn, just tired of the same thing for SO long even though its only about 9 months) so i would like to know if my pregnancy with the 6131 would be worthwhile to give birth to the 6300. i know that the music app is GREATLY improved over the 6131 and the texting seems more intuitive. And since i am able to deal with the 6131's battery i figure i can stand this babys... thanks

[babee_suz]

Before purchasing... i read a bunch of reviews that warned about the battery life. Im an average user... about 50 text msgs a day... 1.5hrs of talking throughout the day... its been about 2 weeks now and i've only charged it 3 times. Once when i just recieved the package (June 15th)- 2nd charge was 3 days after (so... the 18th) and as i am typing this up right now it is sitting on the charger (23rd). so its actually not bad?!?!

[Treatz]

Nice. It would have been a total turn off for me otherwise.


Another question related to bluetooth, does it support syncing (calendar, todos, contacts) over bluetooth? I mean without installing any special Nokia software or drivers (like the Sony Ericsson phones).

thanks again

This i can't answer.
I did'nt want to risk trying

I've had to many bad experiences using sync over BT without allowing me to properly select the flow (OUTLOOK to PHONE)

[Treatz]

compared to a 6131 how would you compare the reception? i am looking for an upgrade to my 6131 (tired of the flip, firmware problems, becoming worn, just tired of the same thing for SO long even though its only about 9 months) so i would like to know if my pregnancy with the 6131 would be worthwhile to give birth to the 6300. i know that the music app is GREATLY improved over the 6131 and the texting seems more intuitive. And since i am able to deal with the 6131's battery i figure i can stand this babys... thanks

I've never used a 6131 to be able to answer you unfortunately.
i'm sure someone who has can better specify

[Hassan_Issa]

Treatz, if you had to pick between the 6300 and the Moto Red Krzr, which would u pick? I am looking to spend my fido dollars, and to be honest, cant decide which one is more worthy, although after reading your review, i am leaning towards the 6300 now. However, the Red Krzr maybe a bit more stylish.

[Treatz]

Treatz, if you had to pick between the 6300 and the Moto Red Krzr, which would u pick? I am looking to spend my fido dollars, and to be honest, cant decide which one is more worthy, although after reading your review, i am leaning towards the 6300 now. However, the Red Krzr maybe a bit more stylish.

Tough call
batteyr wise the K1 worked better for me

camera and OS are about the same for my needs, although the nokia is faster.
Both are BT with A2DP, both take MicroSD.

style on both is excellent.

I guess Price could be a factor to

[MaGNuS_Z]

Man I wish I spent my contract rebate toward the 6300 instead of the Chocolate


Changing subject... anyone wants to buy or trade for a Chocolate?

[hshaikh]

Excellent phone, i agree with Treatz 100%. battery is ok for me, i charge every other day. i use about 1 - 2 hours talk time a day and 10 - 15 texts. i have two issues with the phone, i hope someone has figured thiese out.

1. i would like the call time to show on the LCD when im on a call. all my other phones had this feature.

2. also i dont want it to notify me when the text i send it sent.

thanks

[Drug$toreCowboy]

Excellent phone, i agree with Treatz 100%. battery is ok for me, i charge every other day. i use about 1 - 2 hours talk time a day and 10 - 15 texts. i have two issues with the phone, i hope someone has figured thiese out.

1. i would like the call time to show on the LCD when im on a call. all my other phones had this feature.

2. also i dont want it to notify me when the text i send it sent.

thanks

To answer your first question, there is no way to enable that feature. This is a typical s40 GSM phone which means that feature doesn't exist. Strangely enough, it DOES work in the CDMA version (ie. Nokia 6275i) which is also a s40 phone, but this has been that way for a long time now (look to the Nokia 6230 etc.). This is NOT Fido/Rogers doing or request, just the way Nokia's s40 seems to work with the GSM version.