Nokia C3 (AT&T) QWERTY Cell Phone Short Review

Nokia C3 (AT&T)

Nokia may still be the most recognized cell phone vendor in the globe, but that's far from true in the U. S. Your carrier simply hasn't landed a lot of handsets in carrier stores, and purchasing them unlocked is very expensive beforehand. The Nokia C3 is a new welcome exception. Nokia C3 an AT&T prepaid mobile phone available exclusively at Wal-Mart for under $69. The C3 looks nearly as bad as one of the company's higher-end smartphones beforehand, but it's really a standard texting phone in disguise. However, it's also not very very good. You can do better pertaining to similar money.

• Design and Call up Quality

Let's start with basic principles. The C3 measures 4. 5 by simply 2. 3 by 0. 5 inches wide (HWD) and is four ounces. It's available in a very pleasing slate blue color using silver accents. It's made generally of matte plastic, but the aluminum battery cover gives it a little class, as that's the part you're holding generally. The 2. 4-inch, non-touch LCD gives 320-by-240-pixel resolution. It looks brilliant and colorful, and the UI responds quickly on the five-way

The four row QWERTY keyboard set features large, silent keys. They're a lttle bit stiff, though. And the spacebar only felt weird; each time My spouse and i pressed it, I felt multiple clicks beneath plastic. Dialing numbers also thought cramped, mainly because Nokia centers your numeric keys and puts the zero on the right of the nine essential; this is easy to get accustomed to, though.

The Nokia C3 is often a quad-band EDGE (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) phone without having 3G or Wi-Fi. Voice good quality was just so-so. Callers was thin, tinny, and even unpleasant at higher volumes, and there wasn't enough gain intended for loud environments. The microphone ended up being better; callers said they don't hear anything terribly wrong, eventhough it was clear to them I was with a cell phone. Reception was okay. Calls sounded clear through the Aliph Jawbone Icon ($99, several stars) Bluetooth headset. There were no voice dialing of any sort, which is a problem for anyone driving of a car. The speakerphone was smooth and static free, nevertheless it didn't go loud enough pertaining to outdoor use.

• User Interface and Apps

The Symbian Series 40 OS is pretty dated, but for a low-end phone this way, it's more than up on the task. The unlock sequence was somewhat weird; the phone displays a new numeric keypad showing you which in turn two keys to press, though the phone doesn't have a numeric keypad, plus the "function" key is unlabeled. (It does not take bottom leftmost key, with a graphic associated with an arrow pointing to the prime right).

As a pre paid phone, there are no Global positioning system or other fancy media capabilities. But you do get a number of basic messaging apps, including e-mail, INTERNET MARKETING, and Social Net, which tow hooks into Facebook and Twitter records. The WebKit browser does a fantastic job rendering pages, though controlling the on-screen cursor is often a little fiddly. There are in addition some basic games available.

The product can access Nokia's confusing Ovi Keep, which offers ringtones, wallpaper, and a few basic apps. This isn't a new smartphone, though; don't let your store icon confuse you. The apps available allow me to share more basic and limited than there are on a smartphone.

• Multimedia, Digicam, and Conclusions

The 2-megapixel camera doesn't have a auto-focus or flash. The digicam also seemed buggy; the phone randomly chose between saving photos in a very readable JPG format and a new non-readable, much larger "NRW" formatting. For the ones that labored, images looked sickly, with a green tint and also a grainy texture that looked similar to artificial over-sharpening. Test 320-by-240-pixel videos played quite smoothly at 24 fps, but were a bit darker, soft, and pixelated thanks to your low bit-rate encoding.

Nokia charges the side-mounted microSD slot pertaining to 8GB cards, but my 32GB SanDisk minute card worked fine. There's also 54MB involving free internal memory. Music songs sounded awful over Motorola S9-HD ($129, 3. 5 megastars) Bluetooth headphones. The standard-size 3. 5mm headphone jack port was sadly buggy. When I tried a collection of wired earbuds from a Nokia E5, I can only hear audio reliably a single channel, with plenty of static when i fiddled with the connector. This became not confidence inspiring, to say the lowest amount of. There's a built-in FM radio for the people quick bursts of NPR even though commuting above ground, assuming you will discover an earbud that works.

The Nokia C3 is a superb value for voice calls along with basic messaging. That's it. Should you be shopping for a prepaid AT&T text messages phone, there are some better choices should you be not afraid of a repaired model. They include the Pantech Result ($89 refurbished, 4 megastars), Pantech Pursuit ($79 repaired, 3 stars), and Samsung Endeavor ($89 refurbished, 3 megastars). All three are better texting phones as opposed to Nokia C3, and are better deals as prepaid devices than these folks were as regular contract phones.