Nokia 6300 – Easy Does It

If you’re looking for the signature phone of simple and easy to use then the Nokia 6300 is the phone for you.  This streamlined beauty is designed specifically with simple in mind.  Indeed, Nokia calls this model “Simply beautiful - beautifully simple.”  You won’t find every feature currently available in camera phones crammed into this slim little beauty; instead, they’ve stripped the features down to the true essentials.  With this model, trying to be everything for everybody has been thrown out the window in favor of striving to strike the perfect balance between simplicity and usefulness. 

For example, out of the more popular file formats supported for music support is confined to MP3 and MP4 formatting.  You won’t find support here for the less popular format like WMA.  You’ll even be able to use MP3 ringtones as well as True Tones and MIDI for up to 64 polyphonic tones.

You can get FM radio in stereo and the phone does support the usage of headphones.  There is also a video player but its not clear at the time of this review what formats are supported.  There is an essentially unusable storage capacity built in that comes in under 8 megabytes, but the phone has a microSD slot and Nokia does include a 128 megabyte card with your purchase of the phone.  We do recommend that you use the slot to expand the available storage space to the maximum that the phone will recognize, for 2 gigabytes of music, pictures and movies.

The camera has also been stripped down to essentials by eliminating the flash as well as any LED photo light.  The camera will take pictures at a maximum resolution of 2 megabytes.  The camera does use the entire two inch viewfinder both to display what the camera is seeing as well as any photographs or videos taken, and since the display is in more than 16 million colours you should find taking photos both easy and fun.  The auto focus will do the focusing for you, adding to the ease of use.

You’ll still be able to check your email and message your friends, clients and co-workers with the Nokia 6300, and you’ll even be able to send messages with attachments.  The Nokia Suite is included with the package, and you’ll be able to send voice messages or sound clips with its help using MMS. 

The physical design of the phone includes a black and silver finish to the phone, as well as the 2 inch screen mentioned earlier, an actual 12 key keyboard for numbers that can be used for alphabet, as well, and 4 buttons for navigating and menu functions.  It weighs in at 91 grams and with dimensions of approximately 106 x 44 x 12 should fit easily into pocket or purse. 

This solid state work of art certainly lived up to the promise of simplicity during reviewing, and seemed to be well built and durable.  It’s a good overall choice for most personal users and many business users, and we feel good about recommending it for the ease of use it offers.