Nokia 6300 + Mobile Apps
I recently purchased a Nokia 6300 mobile phone recently, purely on a whim. After about a week’s worth of usage, here are my thoughts on it:
- Nice screen. Clear and reasonably large considering the size of the device.
- Thin. Unlike the N series smartphones, this device is nice and slim.
- Good enough camera. I dont need a fantastic camera on my phone, and for my uses the one included does the job. Your mileage may vary.
- UI - this is the important thing for me, and the Series 40 UI works very nicely indeed. There are certainly some areas where it could be improved, but mostly it works well.
I’ve also been using 2 Java applications on the device which I think really highlight the potential for applications designed for a phone, compared to say a mobile browser based solution:
GMail Mobile App
GMail is blocked at the current client site, so a mobile solution is the only option available to me. I have been very pleasantly surprised by the GMail mobile app. Freed from the constraints of a browser based implementation, the GMail app provides a user experience that is perfectly tailored for a phone.
Orcs and Elves
This is a game written by id Software, the guys behind such hits as Doom and Quake. John Carmack, their uber-programmer has blogged about writing games software for mobile devices before and his approach to work around the inherent limitations of the devices.
As expected the game design works nicely on the phone. The graphics and animation is smooth and slick, and the UI works well. A nice game to play on the tube when I’m too zombified to read anything.
It’s worth noting the Nokia 6300 isn’t a smartphone. It doesn’t run Symbian OS but does provide some great functionality using Java applications and online services.
In fact it has made me question the need for a much more expensive smartphone. It certainly will make the iPhone a pretty tough sell when it finally is released in the UK - wifi access is far from ubiquitous here, and I imagine it will be a very expensive device.