Salient features of the phone :
Standard mobile with an excellent Palmtop with Symbian OS, good applications, fair signal reception, and very easy to use interface.
Details on the top cover(phone) :
Standard buttons (just like any other) and fair display, they should have improved the clarity of the active matrix screen on the top cover. Colour JPG files do not always resolve clearly on the screen.
Voice clarity is excellent, provided you have a good signal, which, to be honest, is most of the time (I subscribed with Hutch). Most normal work like calling/receiving/sending SMS etc can be done from the top cover itself without opening the Palmtop.
Overall : A good phone, although a bit on the bulkier side, due to the built in Palmtop.
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Salient Featues of the Palmtop in Nokia 9300 :
This is what takes the cake in this phone - I am well impressed with the array of features. You have applications categorized into groups : Personal, Office, Media, etc. You have applications like
Doc (compatible with MS-Word),
Sheet (compatible with Excel),
Presentation (compatible with Powerpoint),
a File Manager (compatible with Windows Explorer),
a Calculator (normal plus Scientific),
Contacts database (with picture uploadable facility, groups, individual ring tones), 7. Messaging which can send not only SMS but multimedia too.
A full fledged Calendar with (To-do lists, Anniversaries, Notes, Meetings, etc)
A Web Browser (which gives me access to multiple web sites,
(but here the signal strength has to be high, else you get a timeout error)
Images application to view colour pictures in JPG format
A Voice recorder with 1 hr recording capacity (per file recorded, no upper limit to no. of files, provided you have disk space)
Also an MP3 player!!
...and the list goes on and on - you have active support from Nokia website where you can download useful applications like a Currency convertor, a Meteorology forcast application (this is not from Nokia, but from a user community website of Symbian OS)....
So what we have here is a portable computer (palmtop) with most of the standard features (we should compare this to HP Jornada, perhaps?) with 80MB built-in RAM/Hard disk and a memory slot with a 128MB card (provided with the package) but the phone can take upto 1 GB stick.
And yes - it also doubles up as a standard cell phone. :)
I think when we look at this product we should think it more as a palmtop rather than a phone - as a phone it is definitely bulky and not at all suitable for non-technical oriented people - who probably shall never want to use the MS Office type applications on the go - except for the MP3 player, perhaps.
But for most people who can use a computer, this phone will come in handy. And yes, I forgot to mention - it is completely synchronisable with a PC (Windows 2000/NT/XP) and works smoothly in tranferring files/data.
It even has an infra-red port to transfer data with a Laptop - which I find extremely useful on the go!
Also has Bluetooth embedded, and communicates effortlessly with other compatible Bluetooth enabled devices.
No wonder the ambitious, upwardly mobile young generation will like to get a feel of it and then decide if to own it - the price is somewhat high - Rs. 26k to 28k, depending on where you buy it.
Still, I think unless you have already bought it, wait a year or two - the price will fall and more features/user friendliness will be built into it.
Overall, a good product, but coming with a cost.