- Stylish stainless steel candybar phone with digital audio player, FM radio, and Bluetooth stereo music streaming
- Wi-Fi capabilities for T-Mobile’s Hotspot @Home service for unlimited nationwide calls; compatible with T-Mobile’s MyFaves service
- 2-megapixel camera/camcorder, MicroSD expansion (to 2 GB), access to popular instant messaging services
- Up to 3.5 hours of talk time, up to 336 hours (14 days) of standby time; measures 4.2 x 1.7 x 0.5 inches (HxWxD) and weighs 3.3 ounces
- Includes: handset, battery, charger, dock, wired handsfree headset, quick-start guide
Amazon.com Product Description
Enjoy unlimited, nationwide calling over any accessible Wi-Fi connection in addition to great in-home coverage with the stylish and highly functional Nokia 6301 candybar phone from T-Mobile. Blending the style of a home phone with the look of a mobile, the sleek, stainless steel 6301 comes with a standup charger so you can conveniently dock the phone much as you would a home cordless phone. Other features include a 2-megapixel camera with video capture, digital audio player, FM radio, Bluetooth stereo music streaming, MicroSD memory expansion (to 2 GB), instant messaging capability, and up to 3.5 hours of talk time.
Enjoy unlimited nationwide calling over Wi-Fi networks with T-Mobile’s HotSpot @Home service. |
T-Mobile Service
With T-Mobile HotSpot @Home service, you’ll effortlessly transition between Wi-Fi calling and T-Mobile’s wireless network while you talk. You can get unlimited nationwide calls over Wi-Fi–at home via your wireless router or at any U.S. T-Mobile HotSpot. You can also use the HotSpot @Home service via most open, or unsecured, wireless routers, as well as any secured wireless router for which you have access to the password from the owner. This phone is compatible with routers running the 802.11b/g Wi-Fi standard. Whenever you’re not using a Wi-Fi network, this phone works just like a regular mobile phone, using your Whenever Minutes under your T-Mobile voice plan.
Additionally, this mobile phone operates on GSM 900/1800/1900 networks and can handle high-speed data connectivity via T-Mobile’s EDGE network (which stands for “Enhanced Data Rates for Global Evolution”). This high-speed, mobile data and Internet access technology is fast enough to support a wide range of advanced data services (with average data speeds between 75-135Kbps), including full picture and video messaging, high-speed color Internet access, and email on the go.
This phone also includes compatibility with T-Mobile’s myFaves service, which allows you to call up to five of your most common contacts–on any network, even landlines–without using any of your minutes. Learn more about myFaves from T-Mobile.
Download cool new games, HiFi Ringers (real songs by today’s hottest artists), MegaTones (instrumental versions of songs), and wallpapers quickly, as well as stay connected via the Web, instant messaging, and email.
The attractive desk stand holds the phone and keeps its battery charged while connected to WLAN. |
Phone Features
An evolution of the modern monoblock design, the Nokia 6301 is constructed of stainless steel for added style and durability. A large 240 x 320, 16.7 million color display resides above a five-way center button that controls most of the phone’s menus and functions, while large, easy-to-press buttons are arranged on a sleek rectangular-shaped case. A 2.5mm headphone jack is provided if you want to use a wired headset for calls or for music playback on the built-in music player. Volume control keys are available on the right side of the phone, while USB connectivity is featured on the phone’s bottom edge. The backside of the phone houses the device’s 2.0-megapixel camera lens.
The phone has a 30 MB internal memory, which can be expanded via optional MicroSD memory cards (up to 2 GB in size). The internal phonebook can store up to 1000 contact entries, each with multiple numbers per entry and support for picture and ringer ID as well as caller groups.
This phone provides Bluetooth version 2.0 wireless connectivity with EDR (enhanced data rate), and includes profiles for communication headset, handsfree car kits, and audio/video remote control. With the A2DP Bluetooth profile, you can stream your music to a pair of compatible Bluetooth stereo headphones. You can connect your laptop (via Bluetooth) and enjoy dial-up networking (DUN)–surf the Internet, send email, and access files from a server–using T-Mobile’s EDGE network.
If you need text messaging capabilities, the T339 has you covered as support is built-in for sending and receiving SMS and MMS messages. Instant messaging is also supported too, and comes preloaded with AOL, Yahoo!, MSN and ICQ IM clients (additional fees may apply). When it’s time to connect to the Web, you can do so quickly over the supported EDGE data protocol using the WAP 2.0 browser. T9 text entry, a technology that makes it easier for people to enter words and text on handsets, is built-into the unit–a plus for text messaging users.
Other features include:
- Organizer with calendar, to-do list and notes, alarm clock, countdown timer (normal and interval timer)
- FM radio with Visual Radio feature lets you see information about songs or artists (FM radio requires wired headset)
- Digital audio player compatible with MP3, AAC, AAC+, enhanced AAC+, WMA music files
- Video 3GPP streaming
- Flight mode allows you to safely use the non-wireless functions of this phone (such as music, games, or organizer functions) on an airplane during flight
- Mini-USB connector
- SyncML provides an easy way to sync your phone and PC’s contact list
- Bluetooth version 2.0 with the following profiles: A2DP (stereo music streaming), AVRC (remote control), HFP (hands-free car kits), HSP (communication headsets), DUN (dial-up networking), FTP (file transfer), OPP (object push for business cards, calendar items, and pictures), SPP (serial port profile)
- Macromedia Flash Lite 2.0 and Java MIDP 2.0
Vital Statistics
The Nokia 6301 weighs 3.3 ounces and measures 4.2 x 1.7 x 0.5 inches. Its 860 mAh lithium-ion battery is rated at up to 3.5 hours of talk time, and up to 336 hours of digital standby time. It runs on the 900/1800/1900 GSM/GPRS/EDGE frequencies.
Nokia 6301 Phone, Black/Silver
it has great sound sistem but it a little bit slow and its battery run out quickly and it has great vision
Rating: 4 / 5
I got this phone after essentially being talked into it be a tmobile representive. Now that I have used it, I would certainly say that I prefer a slider phone or a flip phone to a bar phone. The screen is large and bright, but only stays lit a few seconds and I can find no way to change the setting. The screen is easily scratched because there is no protective covering. The camera is just OK, at best.
My biggest complaint and the reason I am returning the phone is because the bluetooth does not work properly. It finds my bluetooth unit easily and connects to the unit, but as soon as I go to use the phone to make a call, it disconnects the bluetooth and will not reconnect. I have tried everything to get it to work, including talking to the bluetooth tech line and there has been no solution. Don’t buy this phone if you use bluetooth.
Rating: 2 / 5
Pro: I like this phone: it feels nice and solid in the hand (the battery cover is metal, not plastic, for example). Clear, colorful display, good Nokia UI with plenty of customizable buttons and menus so you can make it work more as you like. Decent camera. Plug it in with USB and you get the option of accessing the phone from the computer as a plain ol’ disk drive, which is great! Drag-n-drop pictures and mp3′s onto the phone. FM radio works, but reception is only fair with provided headphone-antenna. Bluetooth, no problems. Sound quality is acceptable.
Con: T-Mobile locked down the right “soft” key so you can’t change it from their “t-zones” app. Speaking of t-zones, it regularly locks up my phone, which makes it even more aggrevating that T-Mobile crippled the Java app to only run T-Mobile signed apps “because you might be disappointed in your phone’s performance under unapproved apps” or some such spin. Battery life could be better but it’s okay for light users like me. The battery does not charge over a USB connection, sadly. Horrible, horrible computer-generated voice when using voice commands. Number keys are small for plus-size fingers, power and volume switches are very stiff.
Special note on UMA (wifi) calling (in case it’s not clear yet, wifi does not get you unlimited web browsing): This works, but it’s not as useful as it sounds. Any of a number of issues can prevent you from using any given access point: of course you need the password if it’s secured with WEP or WPA; then you’re out of luck if there’s one of those web-based access restriction (even if it’s just “click here to sign on”); finally, you’re also out of luck if the wireless connection restricts the ports to just allow HTTP and HTTPS traffic, as many do for security. Except with official T-Mobile access points or ones that you personally control, don’t expect connection but instead be pleasantly surprised!
Rating: 4 / 5
I’m a big Nokia fan for it’s past quality, design and simplicity of use, and I have tried so hard to keep this phone, but it didn’t work. I bought 2 phones for myself and wife, and both had same issues:
1. Wi-fi connectivity non-existent, phone would connect to network 1 out of 20 tries. Spent days with T-mobile tech support, until they admitted this phone has a known wi-fi connectivity issue, ticket still open, meaning no fix available. Big thing if you have bad tmobile coverave at home like I do.
2. Poor battery life. Even without hotspot usage, 1 day is a max.
3. Bad voice quality, people you talk to sound like they are on north pole talking from faaar distance.
4. Phone heats up if you talk longer then 2 min.
I gave it 2 stars only because of design. Sorry Nokia, you screwed it this time.
Rating: 2 / 5
I spent several months shopping for a phone when my t-mobile contract was up and had resigned myself to not finding anything that would give me everything I wanted. This phone falls just a tiny bit short, but is a million miles ahead of everything else I looked at. I’ll add more after I’ve had more experience using the phone.
The phone looks gorgeous. The housing and buttons are stainless steel. The trim is glossy black plastic. The buttons have great blue backlighting, and while they are quite small, I have not had any problems using them – despite my chunky fingers. The call/end keys are a good distance away from the soft keys, and that’s a nice change from the Sony-Ericsson TM-506 that I replaced. The power button is on top of the phone, and the headphone jack (a 2.5m), mini usb port, and power adapter port are at the bottom. There is a volume button on the side (also used for voice recognition). The screen is quite large for a phone this size and is very bright. There are options to increase the size of fonts and icons.
My only prior experience with a Nokia is the 5300. I didn’t like that phone at all. I found it difficult (or impossible) to customize it as much as I wanted to, it seemed cheap and flimsy, and the battery life was awful.
The user interface for this phone is far superior to the 5300 and has nearly everything I could want. I like to be able to create a lot of shortcuts to the functions I use often, and this phone has many options for shortcuts. In “active standy” mode (optional), you can create a “shortcut bar” with a seemingly endless number of functions that can have icons assigned to it. The icons can also be arranged in any order. The bar can be placed on the top or bottom of the screen and you can set one of the soft keys or the up or down button of the nav key to access it (you use the left/right buttons to scroll through the shortcut bar). In active standby, there are also three vertical bars that can be assigned shortcuts, selected from a limited range – including the radio, music player, and a display of the current day/date. Scrolling up and down the vertical bars as well as side to side seemed too complicated to me and I was pleased to find that I could set the bars to “empty” and they would disappear. The four directions of the nav key can also have shortcuts (but if you use active standby, either the up or down button – or both – needs to be chosen for that). The left soft key can have a shortcut, but the right one is dedicated to t-zones and cannot be changed.
If you turn off the “active standby” feature, the phone shows icons for the functions of the nav key. If you have the My Faves service, I believe that it can display icons for your “faves.”
One of the shortcut options is “go to last web address.” I love that! I use the tzones service to access my email at the gmail website, and on this phone I can get there with one button. (The phone does include the standard t-mobile email application, but when you use that, each email you read is charged as a text message).
Normally a screen saver is displayed even when the phone backlight is off – if you select “power save” mode, then the screen goes black. The screen savers included with the phone include a digital and analog clock. Both are quite large and easily visible even when the screen is dark. I love that!
The phone has small blue lights on the sides that light up when you miss a call and continually flash every few seconds until you check the display to look at the call.
The phone has a nice mp3 player and FM radio. These seem comparable to the ones on the 5300, which was marketed as a “music phone,” but there are no dedicated music buttons like there are on the Music Xpress series phones. The sound quality from the speaker is surprisingly good and not tinny. The FM radio requires that the wired headset be plugged in as an antenna, but the sound can be set to come through the speaker. There are too many steps involved in changing the sound source, but it does “remember” your last setting when you turn it off. I have had problems getting radio reception when the bluetooth is on – even if the phone is not connected to a bluetooth device. Turning the bluetooth off and then on again fixes this problem. The wired headset has two ear buds for listening to music.
It’s very easy to transfer files to the phone via usb or bluetooth. I have not yet installed the Nokia software, which is not included with the phone, but is available for free at the Nokia website. The phone is identified by my PC like a flash drive and I can easily drag and drop files. The phone came with a 512 MB memory card, which is accessed behind the battery cover (but does not require removal of the battery).
I don’t text, so I have nothing to say about that. The phone is capable of picture messaging and photo caller ID.
I don’t plan to try the camera, but I’ve heard it is not very good. It is a 2MP. There is no dedicated camera button, but it’s easy to create a shortcut to the camera and the screen saver can even be set to the camera so that it is ready to go when the phone is not in use.
The phone charges in about an hour on the included charger stand. The adapter can be removed from the stand and plugged directly into the phone if you prefer. I have only had the phone a couple of days, so I can’t say a lot about battery life, but it seems fine. I have had the bluetooth on continuously, have listened to the radio/mp3 player quite a bit, and have made just a few calls, and the battery shows little wear. I do not have the power saver setting on and the wi-fi is turned off.
I tried out the wifi just to see if it would work. I do not have the HotSpot service. It connected to my router without any problems. The router is set to use MAC filtering rather than a security code. It was easy to find the phone’s MAC address and add it to the router and get going. I didn’t move away from the router, so I can’t speak to the phone’s ability to switch back and forth from the cell network to wifi. The call quality over wifi was just as good as over the cell network. While the wifi does work without the HotSpot service, my understanding is that wifi calls are still deducted from your plan minutes if you don’t have HotSpot. The HotSpot service seems like a great deal – it allows unlimited minutes for $10/month using a t-mobile router at home or other HotSpot locations. I already have a really cheap tmobile plan with more minutes than I ever use – and I don’t have a home phone, so I would not really benefit from HotSpot, but I would definitely get it if I used the phone more. If you don’t want/need HotSpot, the wifi might benefit you if you don’t get good cell coverage at home. The wifi does not work for internet browsing – only phone calls.
Internet access via tzones is fine on this phone, but it has many restrictions. You can’t download any java applications, like the opera browser or google maps, except for those sold by tmobile, and you can’t watch videos. I have used four or five tmobile phones with the tzones service and this one has far more restrictions than any of the others I’ve used. I did a little bit of research and it seems that the only way to remove the restrictions is to debrand the phone. This can disable the wifi or completely ruin the phone if you do it wrong, so I’m reluctant to try it. I used to have a Samsung behold, and I was able to change the internet settings to gain application access, but that doesn’t seem like an option with this phone.
Dealing with the phone book was a bit of a hassle. I found that they were all out of order. There is an option to sort by last name or first name, but it doesn’t work with contacts stored on the SIM card. Some of my contacts didn’t have last names and said things like “Jim at work” or “Paul and Mary” – these contacts were under “a” for “at” or “and.” I called tmobile and they were unable to help and told me to go to a store. Instead, I copied the contacts to the phone (because when you edit them on the SIM, there are not separate fields for first and last name) and fixed the names so that they would sort correctly. Fortunately, I only have about 60 contacts and the phone has a cut/copy/paste function, so it wasn’t too bad, but I wish there had been an easier way.
Call quality is good, although I can hear more ambient noise than normal. Still, it was not bad enough to interfere with the call.
All in all, I love this phone because of all of the ways it can be customized.
Rating: 4 / 5