Nokia 6300 – Powerful Simplicity

As most camera phones get more and more powerful and expand their capabilities, Nokia is doing something extraordinary with the 6300 – they’re moving in the exact opposite direction and focusing on pure simplicity.  As our lives become increasingly complex, it takes work and focus to achieve simplicity, and the Nokia 6300 can help us move powerfully in that direction.

For starters, Nokia kept the camera to 2 mega pixels, more than adequate for most camera phone enthusiasts.  There is no LED photo light and no flash, although the camera phone does support video recording.  It also has an 8x digital zoom.  Happily, the camera phone supports full screen display, both for viewing the photos taken and for display of what the camera is seeing.

The main screen is 30 x 40 mm in a resolution of 240 x 320 pixels with a depth of 24 bits that displays in over 16 million colors.

The phone also functions as a multi-media player.  The camera phone has a built-in FM player with Visual Radio, as well as a media player and a video player. The primary formats of audio supported by the player are MP3 and MP4, and a couple of other miscellaneous formats.  The phone also supports MP3’s for ring tones, as well as True tones MIDI tones and up to 64 Polyphonic tunes.  The phone even supports video ring tones.

They’ve kept the onboard storage capacity very minimal with less than 8 megabytes of storage space.  Fortunately, they’ve included a microSD slot that supports up to 2 gigabytes.  One of the things that I personally enjoy about using a microSD slot is how easy it makes it for me to manage what I’m listening to and watching.  I can carry a small library of cards with me and switch and swap them at will.  Your purchase of the phone includes a 128 megabyte card.

You will of course have Internet functions with the 6300.  You can read, write and send email and the client supports attachments.  The Internet browsing supports XHTML, streaming video and Flash animations.  JAVA support is built in 2.0 for games and applications.  There are two different types of messaging available – SMS and MMS.

The battery allows up to 3 and a half hours of talk time and a little over 14 days on standby.   That’s partly what keeps this phone at 91 grams, which for some users will be a great tradeoff.

On the Personal Information Management side you have a built-in calendar, a to-do list application and notes.  You can store up to 1000 contacts in the phone.  There’s an alarm clock and a countdown that works in both normal and interval modes.

The Nokia Suite will allow you to powerfully manage that information with functions like PC synchronization of data of the calendar, the to-do list and the phonebook.  The built-in USB capability adds to the power of this phone and expands ease of management. 

Overall, this is a solid phone that does exactly what is says it will, and if you’re looking for a camera phone solution that offers both simplicity and power, then the Nokia 6300 is an excellent choice.