I’ve been looking for a quad band (yes, I know, the 9300i is tri-band), bluetooth, wifi smartphone for a long time and was really waiting for the Sony Ericsson p990i or m600i.
I’ve never liked Nokia phones as they have an odd texture on the casing. You can see what I mean by rubbing a regular Nokia phone on the back, and then any SonyEricsson phone. Do this in the shop - it’ll annoy and puzzle the salesguy, which adds to the fun.
The SEs will feel nice and smooth.
Anyway, that’s all cosmetic.
Here’s my take on the Nokai 9300i:
Pros:
Light and pocketable. This is important for me as I refuse to wear those silly mobile phone cases on my belt. Sometimes you have to be able to say ’’I don’t have a mobile phone’’ and it’s hard to do that with a straight face if you have a brick pulling your trousers askew.
Connectivity: Bluetooth, Infrared, 802.11g (WiFi), triband. What more could you ask for? Well, quad band.
Symbian OS: Compared to Windows CE (which, like most Microsoft products) is just about adequate, this OS shines. The task switching, and range of apps available is outstanding. With its pedigree going back almost 20 years (Symbian used to be Psion, the british S/W house which was famous for their Chess and Scrabble programs for the old 8 bit microcomputers), it’s rock solid stable.
Keyboard: while it’s small, it’s very usable.
No (that’s right, NO) camera: this is a major advantage for business users. Many companies and defence installations will not allow camera phones of any sort into the premises. In my job, that’s a big problem. And putting a sticker on the camera sensor only works at idiot companies like the big three W, I, T ’’services’’ companies.
No touch screen and therefore no stylus to lose.
Internet connectivity over 802.11, GPRS auto switches connections. You can set up default priorities, so the phone will hunt for the connection in the order specified. This means you can access the internet using the cheapest data connection available.
Full feature web browser: based on Opera, this browser includes plugins and javascript. Unfortunately it doesn’t work with gmail, but that’s google’s fault. Yahoo mail works fine, so I couldn’t care less.
Memory expansion via MMC cards. 128Mb card included.
Stereo MP3 player/Real video player.
Cons:
Lack of quad band: this is a minor problem today. What this means is that in some parts of the US, your phone will have limited connectivity. In the future, as more cell sites come up in that frequency band, I guess I’ll have problems.
The little joystick device can be tricky to position. Since this phone lacks a touch screen, if you’re in a moving car, it’s very hard to use the web browser.
The upper phone keyboard doesn’t auto lock.
Stereo headphone not included. The package has a handsfree, data cable and stand, along with the sync sw. Given the high price of this phone, Nokia could have easily included the hard to find HS-3 accessory.