Nokia 6303 Classic

Full Review

Alright, you have a modest budget and desire more than just a lame excuse for a phone? Good news: the new Nokia 6303 Classic is just what the doctor ordered. It is good looking, offers a nice clean interface, and has a decent feature set for the price.

The Nokia 6303 Classic's metallic grey body feels nice and solid in the palm, and has a premium air to it. It weighs close to 100g, primarily because of the metal casing. However, the phone isn't too bulky and has big, uncomplicated keypad buttons that are easy to press—whether you're typing out a long SMS or switching between various menu options. It has a 2.2-inch screen with QVGA (240x320 pixels) resolution, 16.7-million colour TFT—typical of a Nokia candybar design that's bright and clear, something similar to the Nokia N85. There's a convenient volume button at the side of the phone.

The Nokia 6303 Classic's metallic grey body feels nice and solid in the palm, and has a premium air to it.

The Nokia 6303 Classic comes with a 3.2-megapixel camera which is not great but good for casual photos. Photos taken in bright light are pretty good, and in low-light conditions the dual-LED flash takes acceptable photos at only short distance. But the shutter-lag is rather long, disappointingly, and the videos shot at 15fps aren't mentionworthy at all. Although it isn't a music phone, the 6303 Classic comes with a simple media player and FM radio support. There's also a standard 3.5mm headphone jack on the bottom, so you can use any headphone you like. Sound from the phone is pretty good for its class, and no complaints on the FM reception either. Battery life is also quite adequate—it lasted me roughly three days on a single charge.

The phone supports a microSD card of upto 4GB, apart from 117MB of onboard memory. It also comes with a microUSB port for connecting a data cable to your computer to transfer music, videos, and photos. Since this is a basic phone, and no smartphone, it doesn't come with 3G, GPS or Wi-Fi. But you can browse the Web through Opera Mini on GPRS—albeit a lot slower. We were very happy with our experience on the Nokia 6303 Classic, and it met most of our expectations of a decent entry-level phone.

Bottom Line

All things considered, the Nokia 6303 Classic is a great entry-level phone if you need to do just a little more than make and receive calls. It covers all the basics very well at a good price.