Nokia 301 Dual SIM

Overview

Attractively Priced Budget Phone

Nokia 301 is from the long line of functional and modern phones from Nokia.

Nokia 301 Design and Build Quality

The phone does not have a touch screen. It is a candy bar shaped keyboard phone. The phone comes in attractive colours include cyan, magenta, yellow, white and black. The phone’s dimensions are 50x114x12.5 mm and it weighs 102 grams. The screen is 2.4 inch TFT. The keyboard keys are solid and they response quickly. The phone has a very sturdy built and it does not look cheap either looks wise or feel wise. The battery life of the phone is very good. It will last you comfortably for a day without charging.

User Interface and Comfort to Use Nokia 301

The phone runs on Nokia S40. It is very simple to use. The dedicated calls accept, reject and menu buttons above the keyboard will take you directly to the menu. The menu has all the options such as gallery, apps, browser, games, settings, messaging listed on one screen. There is a SD card slot on one side making it easy to add or remove the extra memory and on the other side; there is the second SIM slot. The phone has an internal memory of 256MB, which can be extended up to 32GB using the MicroSD card. RAM is 64 MB.

Telephony and Phonebook

The phone supports both 2G and 3G operation. The main SIM Slot supports 3G operations and the secondary SIM only supports 2G operations. The phonebook is simple and lets you add emails and address of contacts. The call quality is good and the loudspeaker is decent but not very good. It is not easy to hear the voice at other end in the crowded areas.

Messaging and Emails

SMS, MMS and Push email are available on the phone. The messaging is simple and you can delete multiple messages.

Gallery, Photo Viewer and Video Player

Gallery is simple and contains basic Nokia Games. The photo viewer is simple and has basic editing options. Videos can be viewed in the landscape mode. The small TFT screen takes the pleasure out of viewing videos. Video player supports AVI, H.264, AVC, MPEG-4, MP4, 3GP, ASF formats.

Nokia 301 Music Player and FM Radio

Music player is OK. The sound from the speaker is ok. The FM radio comes with recording.

Nokia 301 Camera and Image Quality

The camera on the phone comes with a host of features such as Panorama Mode, Automatic Five-shot Photo Burst with Sequential Shot Feature, Self-timer, Fixed Focus, Auto and Manual White Balance, Full Screen Viewfinder, Colour Tone Modes, Automatic Light Sensitivity, and Video Zoom - 3x but does not have flash. The camera is limited to 3.2 MP only. The photos are useable when taken in daylight but night time photos are useless. The camera is decent.

Video Camera and Video Quality

Video recording is possible at 320x240, 30 fps. Video stabilization is not present in the phone and therefore the videos are not too good but good enough for the phone.

Connectivity Options

The phone does not have Wi-Fi or NFC but it does support GPRS, 3G, Bluetooth, and USB. Slam is available on the phone, which lets you connect to the nearest Bluetooth device and transfer on a tap. Connectivity is carrier dependent but Bluetooth and USB are fast.

Organiser and Other Utility Tools

HD Voice Ready Tech, Dictionary, Recorder, Calculator, Clock, World Clock, Calendar, Converter, Notes, Alarm Clock, To-do List, Automatic Redial, Video Sharing, Video Editor, and Photo Sharing are the tools on the Phone.

Nokia 301 Web Browser and Applications

Nokia Xpress browser is the default browser on the phone. The browser uses compressed sites from the Nokia server on the cloud, which minimizes the date usage to a great extent. The browser is fast bur reading date on the browser is difficult because of the small screen. The applications include YouTube, VuClip Videos, IM Apps, Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, Facebook, Twitter, Nokia Chat, and eBuddyIM.

Distinctive Features of Nokia 301

The phone comes with a feature called the SIM Manager. The SIM manger allows you to customize the SIM card for call, mobile, data, and text. The SIM manager button is located at the bottom left.

Value for money

The phone is priced INR 5100 (approx., may vary) in the Indian market. The phone is very attractively priced with the number of features and a strong built.

Verdict

We would rate the phone 4 stars of 5.