A few days back I was looking around for a new mobile handset, and I had quite a few models to consider. My primary requirements were Color screen, Polyphonic ringtones, GPRS and computer connectivity. I had recently purchased a sony ericsson T-230 and I wasn’t too happy with it so I decided to stick with Nokia. The options I had were, Nokia 6100, Nokia 6600, Nokia 3300, N-Gage QD, Nokia-3200 etc.
I finally bought a Nokia 3300 for Rs.7500 .(It wasn’t that easy actually. I had to roam around the city for this model coz its out of stock.) In a nut-shell, its one of the best phones around. Features: Based on the series 40 platform, it has a 128x128 pixel display, color screen, 24 channel polyphonic ring-tones and class 6 GPRS. The USP of this phone is a great sounding stereophonic MP3 player (N-gage’s MP3 player has mono output), FM radio, a bundled 64MB memory card(supports upto 128MB card) and a USB cable to upload music from your computer. The phone is very easy to connect to the computer and does not require any additional device drivers under windows xp and most distributions of linux. (In fact, I use it as a USB drive to transfer data between home and college!!). It is also possible to install Java games and applications on the phone.
The MP3 player features ’continuous play’ ’random play’, and a 5-band graphic equalizer and some standard presets.If you want music on the move, this is the one for you!! Moreover, you can save some voice commands as well for routine tasks like starting the MP3 player or radio etc.
Problems: i)The persistance in the display is high, therefore it takes time for the previous menu to fade out and the new one to appear. The display colors are also not as great as Nokia-6600.
ii) The USB cable supplied (DKU-2) does not give access to the phone’s internal memory, therefore it is not possible to synchronize contacts using PC-Suite or some other phone managers. An F-BUS cable designed for 3300 will do the trick, however, its use is not supported by Nokia and may void your warranty. However, the phone has a backup option that lets you save the contents of the internal memory onto the external memory card.
The features are great.For 7500 bucks, I got an MP3 player, an FM radio, A 64MB USB drive and a phone!! I wonder why Nokia doesn’t sell this model anymore in India ... Overall a very good buy.
* - Update 25/May/2005
Guess what ! Its been 5 months since I bought the phone, and I still haven’t found flaws with it, so I’m increasing its rating... This phone is still one of the best ones around.