Nokia C3-01 Review

When my old phone (a Nokia 6300) died, I wanted to replace it with something that was very similar.

I had been very happy with it, mainly because it was nice and simple. There weren't loads of excess features that I would never use. That, I would consider to be a waste.

I wanted another phone (another Nokia), that was equally simple. No iPhone or Android for me. What would I do with all those things? I don't have time to play Angry Birds and have no need for an app to help me decide what to wear each day.

So talking to the guy in the Orange shop, I was very certain about my needs. As I was entitled to a smart phone as part of my contract deal, he was somewhat shocked (and a tad disappointed in me) when I listed my requirements.

A simple phone, that will let me

• call people ,
• text people and
• take reasonable photos .

There were three Nokia phones that looked quite similar to my old one, and there didn't seem to be too much difference between them. The deciding factor for me was the camera quality. The Nokia C3-01 has a 5 mega pixel camera. That was more mega pixels than either of the others. Simple choice!

This phone looks nice. I was surprised to discover that it is half touch-screen, despite not being a smart-phone. I was a bit unsure about that, as I'm not used to touch screen at all. But the salesman assured me that I'd get used to it quickly.

Visually there are certain differences between my old phone and my new one. Instead of the square four directional button in the centre of the Nokia 6300, you use the screen to navigate around the phone. You click the screen links and icons to get to where you need to be. And under the touch screen is a regular number pad, like any other phone. Instead of the green and red buttons on the 6300 to dial and hang up (respectively), there is a silver bar separating the screen from the number pad, and on either end of this bar are modern, illuminated versions of these buttons.

Turn the phone on its side, press the button on the right-hand side near the bottom of the phone, and it turns into a digital camera. Picture quality is good, and you can make adjustments to the camera with the touch of the screen. Once you've taken the photo, you can edit it very easily (cropping, rotating, adjusting colours etc..), a feature I didn't have on my previous phone, and it saves lots of time later on.

It also arranges your photos in a neat block in a variety of orders, plus allows you to see a timeline view, so you can easily find photos that you took on a specific day. This is a great feature, and avoids lots of time scrolling to find the photo that you want.

There is a programme to transfer your address book, calendar, texts, etc. from your old phone. In theory this would have been a lifesaver, as I didn't fancy copying them all across. In practice it didn't work so well, as each time I tried it, only a fraction of my contacts were copied across, and I still can't get it to copy over my texts. Maybe I did something wrong, but honestly I can't find any other way of doing it. In the end I managed to get most of my contacts in, and put in manually any that I noticed were missing.

It did take me a while to get used to the touch screen aspect. Scrolling through the menus and address books was hard. I kept accidentally opening things when I just wanted to scroll past them, and I also phoned a few people by mistake and sent some blank texts, as the screen was too sensitive to my heavy touch. I swore a lot at my phone. After a while I recognised the correct amount of pressure that was needed to scroll.

I still find it a little tricky sometimes to click on a specific thing, especially if the part of the screen I need to click is quite narrow. You have to get the tip of your finger within the defined area, or it doesn't recognise your click. And I have quite thin fingers, so I imagine it would be even harder for someone with wider ones!

There is a rotating vertical bar down the left-hand side of the screen. This contains icon buttons for the features that people use the most, like mail, calendar, photos, etc. This bar is a little tricky to manoeuvre as you sometimes have to click several of the icons to force the bar to rotate enough to show you the one that you need. It says that you can add icons to this bar, but I found that the list you choose from is rather limited, and does not contain some of the ones that I wanted to include.

There are some features that I miss from my old Nokia. It had a light on the side that used to blink to tell me if I had a message, a text of a missed call. That was very helpful indeed. I now have to unlock my phone and actually look at the screen each time I want to check for these things! [I have since found that there is small, white light, situated in between the red and green phone icons below the screen. It seems to light up in response to a text, a voicemail message or a missed call. However, this does stop after a while].

I am, on the other hand, incredulously happy with the cool ring-tones that come with this phone.

Another (minor) gripe I have comparing this phone to my last is that the countdown timer, once set, doesn't show you the time remaining, on the screen. On the 6300 it was always visible, no matter which screen you were on. On the C3-01 you have to go into the application each time to check. And as this is one of the things I am not allowed to put on my short-cut bar, it means going into the menu, then into apps, and then scrolling and going into the application, each time I want to see the remaining time!

But my annoyance at the timer is probably balanced by my joy at having such a useful torch, illuminated by holding down the */torch/+ key. Genius! (You can probably tell I haven't had a very sophisticated phone before).

But seriously, there are many impressive features to this phone, and despite some misgivings, (which are in part due to the near-perfectness of my previous phone), I do like it, and more each day. I am getting used to the touch screen, it's not as awkward as it was a few weeks ago, and I am swearing at it a lot less than I was those first few days.

I would recommend this phone, but bear in mind that it's not perfect - although some of the things that annoy me might not annoy you. Some of the problems were, of course teething troubles, and other of my gripes could be due to me doing things wrong. (It's possible!). All in all I am satisfied. It meets all three of my original needs perfectly, and the fact that it does a lot more means that I am spoilt. And as the additional features are ones that I actually use and value, they are a bonus, and are not wasted.