As a long time lover of tech toys, this reviewer has had an
opportunity to try out the great, the good, the bad and all the shades in
between. As a bit of a workaholic, my
avid hunger for efficiency and the tools that both manage and create it makes a
Smartphone like the Nokia N95 8GB a welcome face on the mobile phone
scene. It manages to offer rugged can
do functionality combined with a great deal of beauty, too.
Its easy to talk about the Samsung Tocco; it’s a whole lot
easier than NOT talking about it.
That’s because this phone is just such a treat. I know I can be a bit overly enthusiastic at
times, and this phone has a definite tendency to provoke that in me, but I love
technology, and I particularly love technology done well.
The Nokia 6300 is a breath of simplicity in a camera phone
landscape filled with ever increasing capabilities ? and complexities. This minimalistic yet powerful phone strikes
a pretty amazing balance between the functions we need and forgoing some of the
unnecessary functions we buy.
For starters, the design of the phone is very straight
forward and just the tiniest bit retro.
The compact and rugged design will be familiar to most mobile phone
users and highly intuitive. There is an
old school style 12 key alpha numeric pad for input, and the keys are clearly
labeled and large enough to make it easy for almost any hand to
manipulate. There is also a four key
navigation system that is a little bit thinner and ever so slightly more awkward
to use than the pad.
As most camera phones get more and
more powerful and expand their capabilities, Nokia is doing something
extraordinary with the 6300 ? they’re moving in the exact opposite direction
and focusing on pure simplicity. As our
lives become increasingly complex, it takes work and focus to achieve
simplicity, and the Nokia 6300 can help us move powerfully in that direction.
For starters, Nokia kept the camera
to 2 mega pixels, more than adequate for most camera phone enthusiasts. There is no LED photo light and no flash,
although the camera phone does support video recording. It also has an 8x digital zoom. Happily, the camera phone supports full
screen display, both for viewing the photos taken and for display of what the
camera is seeing.