Nokia Asha 303 User Reviews

kapu257 posted on 04 Feb 2013, 02:44

8

Feature phone with smartphone capability

kapu257 has owned it for less than year before publishing this review

I've owned the Nokia Asha 303 for about six months now and I've been very satisfied. Being unlocked it works great as a prepaid AT&T GoPhone. Technically it's a feature phone, but I use it for all the things you'd use a smartphone for. Internet browsing, checking e-mail/social networks, playing games, etc. The phone really shines as just a phone, though. The call quality is excellent, and texting is easy, although the portrait-oriented qwerty keyboard is a bit cramped. Fortunately the predictive text feature will fix most of your typos. What I love so much about the 303 is that it is "touch and type," as Nokia calls it. You get the capacative touchscreen but also a physical qwerty keyboard. The best of both worlds. The phone runs a touch-optimized version Nokia's long used Symbian Series 40 OS. While Series 40 does feel outdated compared to today's Android and iOS operating systems, it's not horrific. It's simple and familiar, and it works. It does show it's age, however. The phone is plagued with menus within menus, which are not difficult to understand but are cumbersome to navigate. The icons are based on the newer Symbian Belle smartphone OS which gives the phone a fresh, modern look. There's 6 preinstalled themes to choose from and many more you can download from the Ovi Store. With the custom themes you can make the phone look anyway you'd like, really. The homescreen offers 4 panels which you can fill with a small list of widgets, such as a shortcut bar, favorite contacts,...  

I've owned the Nokia Asha 303 for about six months now and I've been very satisfied. Being unlocked it works great as a prepaid AT&T GoPhone. Technically it's a feature phone, but I use it for all the things you'd use a smartphone for. Internet browsing, checking e-mail/social networks, playing games, etc. The phone really shines as just a phone, though. The call quality is excellent, and texting is easy, although the portrait-oriented qwerty keyboard is a bit cramped. Fortunately the predictive text feature will fix most of your typos. What I love so much about the 303 is that it is "touch and type," as Nokia calls it. You get the capacative touchscreen but also a physical qwerty keyboard. The best of both worlds. The phone runs a touch-optimized version Nokia's long used Symbian Series 40 OS. While Series 40 does feel outdated compared to today's Android and iOS operating systems, it's not horrific. It's simple and familiar, and it works. It does show it's age, however. The phone is plagued with menus within menus, which are not difficult to understand but are cumbersome to navigate. The icons are based on the newer Symbian Belle smartphone OS which gives the phone a fresh, modern look. There's 6 preinstalled themes to choose from and many more you can download from the Ovi Store. With the custom themes you can make the phone look anyway you'd like, really. The homescreen offers 4 panels which you can fill with a small list of widgets, such as a shortcut bar, favorite contacts, Facebook/Twitter feed, etc. Or if you'd like you can turn off the widgets and opt for a traditional homescreen with just a clock and date. A slick little feature of the homescreen is swipe gestures. By swiping left or right across the homescreen you can open an app of your choosing. On my device, swiping left opens my conversations window and swiping right opens the apps & games folder. You can also customize the left and right shortcut keys on the navigation bar of the homescreen, too. All these shortcut options make getting where you want a real breeze. The phone has a music player that's not too far off from the iPod Classic in terms of UI, and even supports album art and custom playlists. The loudspeaker on the back of the phone is very loud and quite clear. It's on par with higher-end devices for sure. There's also a 3.5 headphone jack on the top for listening through headphones, too. Internet browsing is a little limited on the 2.6 inch screen, but it's decent. And in the way of social networks, there are dedicated Facebook/Twitter/e-mail apps that make the experience better. As far as the browser goes, I ditched the Nokia browser and went for Opera Mini 7. The default browser is capable, but Opera Mini is faster and more feature-rich. App selection is limited compared to Andoid/iOS, but there's plenty to keep you entertained. The phone even ships preinstalled with Angry Birds. Overall it's a great feature phone that's very capable and I would recommend it. :)

Build quality 8/10 The device is mainly plastic but feels solid in the hand. Does not feel flimsy despite being very light. Keyboard is a bit "plasticky," however. Screen scratches fairly easily. Best to keep it covered with a protector. Body shows very minimal damage when dropped on hardwood floor and tile, but will dent very easily on more abrasive surfaces like asphalt.

Reception 9/10 Reception on the AT&T network is excellent. When I experience dropped calls it is almost always because the other caller lost reception, not me.

Call quality 9/10 Call quality is great. Voices sound quite clear and natural. The receiver is a bit quiet even at full volume, but the speakerphone is very loud and clear. Callers on the other end have no problem hearing us.

Internet 6/10 Nokia's default browser gets the job done. Interface is relatively minimal and clean. Speed inconsistently varies from fast to sluggish on both Wi-Fi and network data. Opera Mini 7 offers an overall faster (although still sluggish at times) and more feature-friendly experience. No pinch-to-zoom means you can view pages at full-size or zoomed out completely. On this small display that means lots of scrolling.

Multimedia 8/10 Simple music player is easy to use and offers most of the basics you would expect from a music player. Annoyingly the music player lacks forwarding/rewinding. Supports most common audio formats. Video player is also simple and easily used. Loudspeaker volume and clarity is excellent and rivals higher-end handsets.

Camera 7/10 Camera interface is simple and clean. Photo quality is usually sharp but lacks finer details. Built-in picture editor is very useful. Video quality is overall blurry but not completely terrible.

UI speed 9/10 Navigating menus is snappy and smooth. Camera loads quickly as well as apps. Only sluggishness comes from opening the photo gallery and app drawer, which take a few seconds to load. Scrolling through these is also a bit less fluid, but perfectly usable.

Everyday usage 9/10 All your basic functions (calling, texting, setting alarms, looking up contacts, listening to music, adding calendar appointments, etc) are beautifully simple to do. Internet browsing is less elegant, but as a simple phone this device does it's job well.

Text input 7/10 The portrait-oriented keypad is a bit cramped, but the keys are well raised and the predictive text feature does a great job fixing errors due to mis-pressed keys.

Display 7/10 Brightness is good and colors look vibrant enough on the 2.6 inch display. Viewing angles are ok, but the screen can be difficult to read in very bright sunlight. Although small, the touchscreen is very responsive.

Battery 9/10 The phone will last on a single charge for three or more days of just calling/texting and a bit of app usage. Heavy internet usage cuts the battery life down to a day and a half, two days max on a full charge.

Pros

• Excellent call quality
• Touch and type, best of both worlds
• Great quality loudspeaker and volume
• Many shortcuts, all customizable to your liking
• Theme/ringtone/homescreen customization

Cons

• Many hidden menus in UI
• Small screen not great for internet browsing
• Small selection of available apps

Sharky posted on 18 Sep 2012, 11:12

8

Great feature phone

Sharky has owned it for less than month before publishing this review

This phone is pretty good for a feature phone/borderline smartphone. Has great reception, good call quality (espeically with Voice Clarity), good keyboard w/ good predictive text software, responsive touchscreen, Wifi (no data plan necessary on At&T!), and some nice multimedia features. I think the biggest problem comes with the clunkyness of the UI. Symbian S40 has been around forever and even with some of the improvements that Nokia has made it still feels clunky. I guess I've just gotten used to today's moredern UIs (Android/WP/iOS). For example, if I'm listening to music and I want to get back to the home screen I have to press back 2-3 times to get to the homescreen. If I press the End/Power button it askes me if I want to exit the music player.

Build quality 10/10 Solidly build, unlike many feature phones. Yes, its mostly plasitc, but nothing creaks.

Reception 10/10

Call quality 8/10 Generally good although a bit muffled. With Voice Clarity feature it improves, but it also tends to clip voices here and there.

Internet 5/10 Browser is so so. No pinch to zoom sucks. But its stable and works well for what it does.

Multimedia 7/10 I really like the music player. Doesn't support a ton of formats though. The EQ is a nice feature and I especially like the customizable EQ settings. Don't watch much video on this, but tried a couple of youtube vids and they played just fine.

Camera 6/10 Good photos in good lighting settings. Not so good with less than good lighting conditions. Lots of digital noise.

UI speed 8/10 UI is fast thanks to the 1Ghz processor.

Everyday usage 9/10 Great for phone calls, messaging, and listening to music. I really do like it, for the basics at least.

Text input 9/10 The keys are small, but I find I'm able to type on it just fine. The Samsung Flight (my previous phone) had a smaller keyboard so I guess I'm used to it.

Display 7/10 2.6 inch screen is just fine for what it is. Brightness is ok.

Battery 10/10 Pretty good battery life.

Pros

• Build Quality
• Reception
• Responsive touchscreen
• WiFi

Cons

• UI

leo1052 posted on 05 Sep 2012, 09:04

9

Nokia Asha 303

leo1052 has owned it for less than 3 months before publishing this review

Nokia Asha 303 is the best touch and type phone that I have used to date, my previous phone was a Nokia X3 and that was frankly dissapointing. It is affordable, simple to use with a friendly user interface. I was looking for a phone that wasn't to complicated to use, I am not really into playing tons of games or downloading lots of apps I like to use a phone for basic phone calls and texts, don't be put off by that it will download apps and games galore if you want it to and is preloaded with lots of goodies anyway, it is aimed at a younger market and I am nearly sixty so if you are older like me you don't have to be a technical whizz Kid to use it beleive me. I use facebook for family and friends and with wifi connectivity its fast and furious with connection and I get updateds with BTFON for free with no extra data charges to the touch screen. You can connect it to other devices and I use it along with my my desktop and laptop via nokia suite,that's great as it will also update the software on your phone and you can get faster downloads that way if you want them. It has a radio and a camera and takes video's as well, the camera isn't what I would call brilliant but if you just want to be able to take the odd family snap or of friends and pets etc when out and about then it's perfectaly ok for that and the pictures are acceptable and can be uploaded to facebook etc, if you are wanting the perfect picture of a beatuiful sunset or something with much more detail then you will need...  

Nokia Asha 303 is the best touch and type phone that I have used to date, my previous phone was a Nokia X3 and that was frankly dissapointing. It is affordable, simple to use with a friendly user interface. I was looking for a phone that wasn't to complicated to use, I am not really into playing tons of games or downloading lots of apps I like to use a phone for basic phone calls and texts, don't be put off by that it will download apps and games galore if you want it to and is preloaded with lots of goodies anyway, it is aimed at a younger market and I am nearly sixty so if you are older like me you don't have to be a technical whizz Kid to use it beleive me. I use facebook for family and friends and with wifi connectivity its fast and furious with connection and I get updateds with BTFON for free with no extra data charges to the touch screen. You can connect it to other devices and I use it along with my my desktop and laptop via nokia suite,that's great as it will also update the software on your phone and you can get faster downloads that way if you want them. It has a radio and a camera and takes video's as well, the camera isn't what I would call brilliant but if you just want to be able to take the odd family snap or of friends and pets etc when out and about then it's perfectaly ok for that and the pictures are acceptable and can be uploaded to facebook etc, if you are wanting the perfect picture of a beatuiful sunset or something with much more detail then you will need the use of another camera, the radio is fine with headphones if you are on a train journey and so are the games if you like them. The keyboard is easy to use and navigate, just a liitle on the small side for seeing what is displayed there but my eyesight is not so good these days so the fault really lies with me so don't let that put you off. It has bluetooth as well and I thouroughly reccomend this phone to all age groups. I have had a lot of phones since mobiles started and I know that Nokia perhaps is a little tired as the market goes, but in general and I have had other makes I find there phones the most reliable and I would sincerely give this a 9/10 it the camera was of a higher spec then 10/10

Build quality 10/10

Reception 10/10

Call quality 10/10

Internet 10/10

Multimedia 10/10

Camera 9/10

UI speed 10/10

Everyday usage 10/10

Text input 9/10

Display 10/10

Battery 10/10

DonAlex2 posted on 17 May 2012, 06:22

10

Great alternative to a smartphone

DonAlex2 has owned it for less than 3 months before publishing this review

Had an Iphone 4 and not looking back. Does everything I need. Very simple and user friendly OS. I love the calendar function and the ability to check Facebook, Twitter and Gmail. Does everything that my Iphone did with the exception of having access to a million apps. But I can use my Ipad for that. I couldn't justify spending extra $ to have an Iphone (paying $30 extra a month for data to play angry birds, etc) and am happy that I have a phone I can still talk, text and access internet via wifi.

Build quality 10/10 Solid feel

Reception 10/10

Call quality 10/10

Internet 9/10

Multimedia 9/10

Camera 10/10

UI speed 10/10

Everyday usage 10/10

Text input 10/10

Display 10/10

Battery 10/10