Nokia C3-01

The Nokia C3-01 Touch and Type is a superb feature phone considering the price. But before going into the detailed review I would like to warn you that this is not same as the Nokia C3 model. The camera is excellent, no complains about expandable storage except storage on board and of course looks great. I have been using Samsung devices for sometime now but I feel the Nokia C3-01 is a great buy.

Regarding the differences between Nokia C3 and Nokia C3-01, Nokia C3-01 has touchscreen and is 3G Network enabled where as Nokia C3 isn’t. To put it more simply Nokia C3-01 has a hybrid keypad plus touchscreen design whereas Nokia C3 has a QWERTY keypad but no touchscreen. Considering their prices Nokia C3 sells at around £89.50 and Nokia C3-01 is priced at £110.50. But performance wise both are equally good and there is hardly anything to choose.

COMFORTABLE DESIGN

I am most impressed by Nokia C3-01’s classic candybar design (111x47.5x11mm) and its stainless steel chassis with large number pad. The individual keys sit with lovely faint click which makes texting easier and with speed. I was surprised in the beginning that it has no navigation pad only to realize that it doesn’t need one because right above the touchscreen sits long tablets representing Call and End buttons.

This is a perfect example if resistive technology. The more or less aged Simbian S40 operating system has been brought to 2011 in Nokia C3-01 with touchscren, moving out of the old key pad navigation to clicking on icons and of courses making things fast. Although the display is a a good 2.4 inch with a very low resolution of 240x320 pi yet reasonably sharp. Nokia C3-01 allows a maximum of nine personalized short cuts for the user at the ‘Go to’ option.

Like most of the Nokia mobiles the headset slot (35mm), the microUSB and charger port sit on the top. Talking about the headset it goes to the credit of Nokia for its excellent response considering the low-cost. The low 30 MB sitting memory is definitely one of its lows since transferring a medium sized file through blue-toothbbecomes difficult if the phonebook or sitting memory is crowded. A microSD card slot underneath the backflap gives you a bit of breathing space. It comes with a handy 2GB for the money, extendable to 8 GB. The 5-megapixel camera armed with flash is reasonably functional.

Nokia’s Messaging 3.0, which features support for both email (SMTP, IMAP4, POP3) Twitter and Facebook works fine. Since the resolution is low, web pages look bad and are difficult to navigate and there’s no pinch-to-zoom, which is an inherent problem with touchscreen devices. However a point of more concern is more than one error encountered when attempting to boot up Opera Mini browser. I found that the stock Nokia browser, more often than not out-performed the Opera Mini terms of speed atleast. The C3-01 does boast of Wi-Fi as well as the HSDPA and Bluetooth. Unfortunately the annoying S40 eccentricities are still present in the Nokia C3-01, like the constant notifications that pop up every time you attempt to access the internet or anything remotely web-related, which is, to my mind, is an unnecessary wastage of time.

As always the battery life is excellent probably its best part. With reasonable usage a full charge is enough to keep you going for atleast a couple of days.

A BIT OF IMPORTANT TECHNICALITIES:

Weight: 100 g
Display: TFT, resistive touchscreen with 256K colors
Size: 2.4 inch
Available colors: Silver, Warm grey, Golden khaki

The last words: The Nokia C3-01 is a brilliant low priced feature phone featuring a great camera, lots of expandable storage and a fabulous look.