I had to replace my mobile phone recently, so I deliberately downgraded. After perfunctory Internet research, I got a Nokia 6300. If you are not one of the Young People and you use your phone for business then it is a most excellent tool. If you want to blog or surf the Net from your phone or deafen people on public transport with your MP3 collection, then look elsewhere.

If it were a person, the 6300 would be a man in a suit called Colin. He would wear Clarks shoes and have a small pot of sharpened 1B pencils on his desk and drive a diesel hatchback bought with a two-year warranty from Network Q. He would use it to commute to work in Milton Keynes with David Gray on the stereo. You wouldn’t ask him to help you to write an anniversary love poem for your wife, but you’d trust him to check your tax return.

The 6300 calmly sucked up most [smaller memory] of the data I had backed-up from my old Nokia to my PC via a standard mini USB connector (not supplied) without my having to download any new software or drivers. Then, when it had finished, it filed all my contacts in alphabetical order by surname, just like Colin would have.

The phone is small, but easy for even a six-foot male to use. Its operating system is stable. Its display is excellent. On the downside, the rocker control is a bit fiddly and the battery life could be better.

Nobody paid me to write this, but, following the popularity of my previous Nokia post, I thought some more random visitors might be interested. I’ll make the same recommendation now that I made then: use the CD that came with your phone as a coaster or part of a wind chime1 and download any software you need direct from the Nokia site, paying attention to the small print there and warnings from discussion forums everywhere else.

  1. No. Don’t. Wind chimes are vile. [↩]