Smaller, slimmer and with fewer features than its bigger brother, Nokia's 9300 Communicator is a step in the right direction. A review by Jørgen Sundgot.
Review summary of the Nokia 9300 Communicator:
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 Chock full of promising concepts, the Nokia 9300 Communicator gets most things right in the hardware department, but stumbles repeatedly what concerns software. A fantabulous display is hampered by poorly utilized screen estate; applications in general and the powerful browser in particular by sluggish performance; and PIM and e-mail synchronization by slow and poorly implemented local support as well as a complete lack of groupware support. Superb connectivity doesn’t do much good when its full potential cannot be exploited, but for those whose needs fall within its stark boundaries, the 9300 delivers the goods in a nicer package than the 9500. Release: September 2005. Price: $200.
Pros: Sleek and small; astonishing internal display; near-perfect thumbboard; comprehensive connectivity
Cons: Sluggish interaction; lacks Wi-Fi; numerous software issues; no vibrating alert
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Full review of the Nokia 9300 Communicator:
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Following hot on the heels of the unwieldy
Nokia 9500 Communicator, the Finnish handet maker takes yet another crack at coming up with a communicator suited to compete in today's increasingly heated market. With slimmer appearances and just a feature or two shy of its bigger brother, the Nokia 9300 Communicator makes a good first impression - but as with the 9500, multiple caveats lurk beneath its closed lid.
Approaching aerodynamic
When compared side by side with the 9500, the size reduction of the 9300 is almost laughable: at 132 x 51 x 21 mm, the 167 g device is impressively slim and pocketable. The outside offers up a large and comfortable numeric keypad right beneath an itsy bitsy display running the Series 40 operating system at 128 x 128 pixels and 65K colours. Tactile feedback is excellent, and fortunately audible feedback isn't loud enough to negate a bit of discrete in-meeting tapping.
Losing the integrated 0.3 Megapixel of the 9500, the only other external tidbits worth mentioning include a dedicated speakerphone loudspeaker atop the device, and as with the 9500 the 9300 is now held face inward when talking, as opposed to their predecessors. Also, the bottom conceals Nokia's proprietary Pop-port connector and a charging jack.
Every now and then, being introvert is a good thing
Crack the 9300 open, and things are immediately looking up as compared to the dull outside. First off, we find a 640 x 200 pixel transflective display with 65K colours and adjustable brightness which, as is the case with the screen of the 9500, is outright astonishing. Indoor performance is impressive, but the only other device that looks this good outdoors is the 9500 - oh, if only it was touch sensitive. Lest we forget, there's also four soft buttons to its right which all applications tie into.
Moving on to the thumbboard, there's more good news to be had. Unlike the 9500, the thumbboard of the 9300 is narrow enough to avoid straining ones thumbs, leaving an excellent input option with large keys and adequate tactile feedback. Also, the 9300 offers several localized layouts and a dedicated numerical row, plus a top row of eight dedicated application buttons which even includes a 'My own' key to the far right which users can set to any application they'd like - we only wish there were more than one.
The amount of functionality available through dedicated keys and shortcut combinations is very extensive, and the 9300 beats the pants off any other device in this regard. There's more praise to be had, however, as the thumbboard sneakily incorporates both an excellent nine-way navigational pad and four separate directional keys. At first glance, these perform the exact same functions, but in the web browser the navigational pad controls a mouse cursor while the directional keys tend to scrolling: fiendishly clever and very well implemented.
Hooking up
Barring 3G and Wi-Fi, the 9300 is very well equipped in the connectivity department. Offering tri-band GSM 900/1800/1900 MHz for WAN purposes, we also find HSCSD and Fax support, along with GPRS, EDGE, Infrared and Bluetooth with an adequate set of profiles included.
The lack of Wi-Fi isn't hardly as pressing an issue as one would think, however, as its implementation in the 9500 proved somewhat pointless. Briefly put, the slow processor was more of a hindrance to the web browser than download speeds, causing e-mail to be the sole application benefiting to any degree - and then only for people which frequently receive large attachments for viewing.
On the wired side of things, the 9300 is equipped with a Pop-port which offers compatibility with a range of Nokia accessories, as well as USB 2.0 connectivity for fast file transfer courtesy of the bundled cable.
Files can be transferred directly to the 80 MB of non-volatile memory of the 9300, which is a welcome improvement over previous models that allows more applications to run simultaneously, or to an MMC card. Incomprehensibly, the memory card expansion slot remains under the battery cover - yet is at least no longer placed under the battery itself.
Despite its barrage of connectivity options and a smaller battery than the 9500, the Nokia 9300 offers good battery life, easily lasting a full two days of extensive use - a better performance than the recently reviewed
Nokia 7710. Also, audio quality proved above-par throughout testing, with the speakerphone delivering improved clarity over previous models.
Oh dear, this can't be good
At first glance, the Series 80 based Nokia 9300 doesn't appear to have changed much from the 9200 Communicator series - but looks, as we all know, can be deceiving. Now utilizing Symbian OS 7.0 rather than 6.0, there are a number of technological improvements under the hood, but what users will notice is Nokia's decision to implement an underpowered processor for the 9300, resulting in overall performance being sluggish and applications taking up to two seconds to open in worst case scenarios.
Fortunately, the user interface remains simple and intuitive, and switching between applications is now far from as aggravating as with past models thanks to the introduction of dedicated application keys. Screen estate is shockingly poorly utilized in comparison with the Series 90 powered Nokia 7710, however, which fares better in the vast majority of situations.
Take the Messaging application, for instance, which offers up a unified approach to SMS, MMS, Fax and e-mail: three messages with sender, subject, date and size is all that will show up in initial views - and users cannot even view the full contents of the subject field should it be too long for the view in use. There's more wrong with it, however, as support for over-the-air synchronization of e-mail with groupware software is still restricted to moth-eaten, bandwidth-intensive protocols such as POP3, IMAP4 and SMTP - unforgiveable for a modern enterprise device.
Mitigating this somewhat, Nokia has made special adaptations to allow for users to subscribe to e-mail subfolders through IMAP gateways for Microsoft Exchange servers, but this is hardly enough. What's worse, however, is that unlike for SMS and MMS, there is no way to configure neither visual nor audible alerts for new e-mail - for which users must either remain connected to an IMAP server at all times or check manually as there is no scheduling functionality.
Moreover, instead of tieing into the 9300's connectivity setup, which allows users to set up and prioritize network connections from its control panel, the e-mail client utilizes a self-contained redundant system that entirely circumvents this. One word: moronic. Topping off a reeking impression, the 9300 has no vibrating alert, which is most noticeable in conjuction with the messaging client - and entirely beyond comprehension.
There are upsides to the software suite of the 9300, however, such as the Opera web browser which has been repackaged in a Nokia user interface. It might well be the most fully featured browser yet to grace a mobile device, and the combination of a virtual mouse, multiple windows and technology which adapts full-size web pages to the 640 pixels of the 9300 is a lovely concept. It's a bit of a shame that the slow processor causes slow page loading even over EDGE, though.
It, too, has its drawbacks, however, such as the inability to use the Tab key for link jumping when browsing WAP sites - a shortcoming shared with HTML based e-mails which draw upon the browser for displaying. Incidentally, it is also impossible to block the downloading of images in HTML e-mails; fortunately, once downloaded, images are cached. The office suite makes a more positive impression, however, and not only views but also edits files in Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint with relative aplomb. We cannot help wonder why the thesaurus and spell checker found in the Documents application found on the 9210i were removed, however.
Worst of all, perhaps, is Nokia's continued refusal to address the issue of poor localized synchronization, which remains an agonizingly slow procedure with lacking support for categories, be it for calendar or contacts items; tasks remain unsupported. Finally, the Series 40 interface also offers up a couple of quirks: it does not provide any means of Bluetooth control, nor does it support predictive text input - which for many negates one-handed text input.
Availability
The Nokia 9300 Communicator is at the time of press shipping in Europe and Asia, selling in the 550 EUR range. A version will also be available for the North American market, offering GSM 850/1800/1900 MHz connectivity.
Price and availability
The Nokia 9300 Communicator will start selling for $200 to $500 ((Cingular)) in September 2005.
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