Enough with the Nokia 603 honeymoon and time for week one review on the mid tier saber. The phone runs Nokia Belle and is currently being sold for 200 Euro. It is one of the most affordable premium smartphone in the market.
As mentioned on my previous article, the phone still needs to go through my critical eye, here is my take on the device so far.
Adulation
The phone is a natural charmer, its shiny, attractive and teasing. Its close front Gorilla glass display extending to the sides makes it scratch and dust proof, a brilliant modification on design that adds up to its appeal. The rubberized plastic back cover gave the phone a better grip, a gauranteed assurance that it will not slip to users hands for no reason.
The phones body dimensions is 113.5 x 57.1 x 12.7mm, quite thinner than the usual but what gives it a slim impression were its curve sides and its weight of only 109.6 grams. I made mention before that dimension wont matter, will having tried slimmer and lightweight devices and liking it changes everything. Thin is the future and weight is an indispensable accent.
The phone has a bright screen and I'm loving it day by day. I made mention on my first impression article about AMOLED being crisp color-wise, well IPS LCD with Clear Black Display is crisper and brighter, AMOLED shows only vibrancy and adeptness.
The 1Ghz processor is a huge boast for the phone, it made a remarkable change in the phones speed, sleekness and overall performance. Fast and smooth swiping, accelerated response in opening applications, better performance all over, speedy browsing and download of web pages, almost instant camera capture, were just among its advantages, but most importantly, the phone could now handle higher GPU like the 2D/3D graphics HW accelerator with OpenVG1.1 and OpenGL ES2.0, giving the phone graphic transitions never been seen in old Symbian^3 phones before. This would also mean compatibility to a lot of 3D games and applications available in the mobilephone software market at the moment.
The phones Nokia eMail version is E-Series like, this simply means that the phone has the components and mechanism of the most powerful messaging system in the market. Nokia eMail is simple, fast, dynamic and reliable. Reading, erasing or syncing email to any email hosting clients online is a breeze.
Near Field Communication (NFC) is very convenient to use, I find myself using it everyday in pairing my Nokia Luna trial headset. No need to open Bluetooth grid and pair the device manually, all I need to do is touch the phone on the device and its ready to go. This technology will have a long way to go, the future of communication perhaps would perfectly describe it.
Pre-installed apps varies in every phone type, the Nokia 603 has the following to brag; Vlingo Voice, Angry Birds Magic, Fruit Ninja, CNN video, Nat Geo video and Shazam. All runs a full version except Angry Birds Magic. Vlingo Voice is fun to use while I find Shazam is very usable in identifying music thats fresh to my ear.
Despair
Its still early to judge the phones performance with barely a week of use but the following somehow upsets me one way or another. I'm not sure if some of the issues I encountered were specifically confined to this phone alone being a trial device or if it is prevalent to others.
GPS, I find it weak to detect my location compared to my Nokia N8. I'm fun of visiting and checking-in to places on Foursquare, a social geo app, and there were a lot scenario's or instances where my Nokia N8 can reliably find my location fast while Nokia 603 wont. A different and cheaper GPS chip perhaps was use in the Nokia 603 that why it fails to do its tasks?
Lock key seems lost in the wilderness being placed on top of the phone. With its one push mechanism to lock the phone, it could have been easily squeezed on either left or right side of the phone but designers thought otherwise, a poor decision I would say.
A WiFi connection problem is prevalent, might be a bug, but in a few instance when I turn the mobile data on to connect online then turn it off, the phone will fail to connect to an available WiFi unless rebooted.
But the worst issue I found so far, the phone unbelievably hangs like its running a beta version or something. Less often than not and for certain reasons like multiple open apps or heavy programs, the phone suddenly fails to respond to touch commands and the only remedy is to reboot the phone. Say in the last seven days, it happens 4 times or somewhere close to that. Well, you might say that every phone hangs at one point or another but it becomes annoying if it hangs while you boastfully show and promote it to your friends.
Then again, I have to mention that the phone might be a buggy one or worst, defective, so I will not jump to any conclusion for now, not unless others were also experiencing such. I haven't experience this on my Nokia N8 running Belle.
Oh, well, the blog post was already long so I need to stop from here. More fearless posts, a full review and a video for Nokia 603 coming up on the blog, so stay tuned!
Mar 9, 2012
The Nokia 603 Week One, Adulation and Despair
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