Nokia's new 9300 smartphone review
Nokia 9300
£250-ish with contract
The lowdown
Nokia has taken its Communicator brick 9500 smart phone shed a bit of weight and size, and re-packaged it as the 9300 – a smartphone for busy professionals. It keeps some of the 9500’s core features such as its excellent QWERTY keyboard and its high contrast wide screen.
What’s good?
It is arguably the first pocketable smartphone (it’ll just about squeeze in) with a decent-ish QWERTY keyboard. Slap it flat on a desk and you can not only thumb type you can also speed things up by using a finger too. The phone also boasts a huge number of features including Blackberry push-mail, Opera’s superb web browser and a Real player for replaying video and MP3 audio. It is also compatible with many microsoft Office files formats (Word etc) and is compatible with VPNs.
What’s bad?
There’s no camera, which although might not be top of the busy execs wants lists would still have been a decent touch. The Communicator style flip open form factor might not suit everyone and the screen isn’t the most suitable for web browsing. Unlike the 9500 there’s no Wi-Fi either.
Do you need it?
In our book top of the smartphones key features list has to be a decent keyboard and the 9300 has one of the best around. It also has a good line up facilities Opera, Blackberry etc and a great operating system and interface. It will be well worth forking out £250 or so needed to secure one when it arrives in January 2005.
8.5/10
