| 19 AUGUST 2005 |
| Nokia
9300 Communicator |
The typical business user or
tech-tech savvy consumer usually have a cell-phone, laptop
computer, and maybe even a PDA. With all these devices, it
can be difficult keeping information synchronized between all
these devices. When one fails to keep the information on
their devices synchronized, then they start to just focus on a
single device, leaving other devices alone.
Nokia has created a unique phone that manages to combine the
features of a cell-phone with a smart-phone organizer into a
smaller device. With this smaller device, the mobile
professional is able to get connected and communicate easily
with others.
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At a glance, the 9300 is a phone
that is not your typical candybar type phone that is all pretty
looking. When I first looked at the actual size of the
phone, it looked quite large and fairly ugly. It is almost
long enough to almost be the size of a full-size headset of the
phone. If you look at the front of the phone, you can see
that the overall style of the phone still looks like a Nokia
phone. The part that makes the phone ugly is the extension
at the bottom of the phone. There's not much to see at the
back of the phone except the removable battery cover where you
can access the battery.
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The phone has the same type of
interface and style of your typical Nokia phone. There is
a battery indicator on the right side of the screen and a signal
strength meter on the left side. |
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The heart of the device is
revealed when you flip open the phone on its side. It
reveals a full 'qwerty' keyboard at the bottom and a large
screen on the top.
The keyboard is very tactile and easy to use. The keys are
considered quite large for a phone.
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I have to admit
that the screen is one of the main highlights for the phone.
It is bright-looking and the very fine pixels give the screen a
very refined look. The main menu of the phone is shown
above. There you can see the menu items listed in a list
format with small icons next to each item in the list.
At the right of the screen, there are four buttons which are
essential in performing functions within applications. At
the main menu screen, for instance, you can press one of these
buttons to immediately create a new note.
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The main
attraction with this device is how well the phone is integrated
with the organizer. For example, whenever you add contact
information through the phone or through the organizer, you can
access them both ways. I added several contacts to the
organizer and with the organizer open, I was able to initiate a
phone call. Then you can close the organizer and talk
through the phone instead.
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Before you can use the Internet
capabilities of the phone, the phone needs to be on at the front
of the device. That's because it uses the phone's data
capabilities to send and receive data as opposed to something
like Wi-Fi. In fact, it would have been better if this
device had Wi-Fi capabilities as well.
When you open a web-page in the integrated browser ( I opened up
the Yahoo webpage), only a portion of the webpage can be seen.
From then on, you can use the small joystick at the bottom right
of the keyboard in order to serve as a mouse pointer to navigate
and click on buttons. The joystick works well in click on
buttons and items on a webpage, but it can take a little more
time using it to scroll down in a webpage since the scroll bar
is very thin. Instead, it is better to use the up and down
arrows on the keyboard to scroll in the webpage.
Being able to view webpages is just one of the tools on the
phone. There are other tools such as office applications,
backup, and file managing tools. Also, since this device
does use the Symbian OS, there are a wide variety of
applications that can be purchased and used with this device.
Therefore, this device can be customized to the user's liking
while still providing a lot of power and functionality.
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Although the Nokia 9300 is
definitely not for everyone, it can be useful to certain people
who would like a fully functional device which allows you to
communicate more easily than your typical phone. With a
full keyboard, you will be able to send check email, surf the
internet, send messages, and be able to compose larger messages
on the fly. My only gripes with the phone is not the
functionality itself, but with the design. This phone is
not your typical 'good-looking' phone, but it does what you need
to get done and that's the point. For corporate users,
this phone satisfies your needs with support for applications
from Oracle, IBM, etc.
Reviewed by
ronald@digitalreviews.net
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