Nokia 6303i classic review: Retro chic

Music player is ok

The music player of the Nokia 6303i classic looks decently and has a good set of features. It has decent looks and all-round functionality, including album art, and a fair number of formats are supported. The theme can be set to match that of the rest of the phone, integrating it very well with the rest of the interface.

The music player is controlled with the D-pad. Besides all the typical functions, the music player of Nokia 6303i classic also sorts songs by artist, album and genre. The player works with AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, MP3, WMA, AMR-NB. Naturally A2DP profile is supported, allowing the use of stereo Bluetooth earphones.

The music player does the job

As usual, the artist and title of the currently playing song are shown on the homescreen. They appear in the Radio and music area on the homescreen so they need to be active for the info to be displayed.

FM radio has RDS

An alternative to the preloaded content on Nokia 6303i classic is the FM radio. It matches the music player interface and covers all basic functions.

RDS support is available and you can make the handset to search and save all available stations in your area. RDS info and frequency appear on the homescreen, much like with the music player.

Video player is hardly worth it

Let’s make this clear – the Nokia 6303i classic is by no means a device that should be considered by anyone who is serious about watching videos on their mobile. The combination of a small screen, a low number of supported codecs and a less than fully-featured video player hardly creates the ideal conditions for pleasurable viewing.

The Nokia 6303i classic is hardly suited for watching video clips

The video player of Nokia 6303i classic is only compatible with 3GP and MP4 formats. Videos can be played in fullscreen mode, fast-forwarded or rewound and that’s that.

Audio quality does great

Even though it is not a music phone, Nokia 6303i classic has pretty good audio quality. It also pulled off pretty decent total harmonic distortion and intermodulation distortion scores.

The rest of the readings in our audio quality test were also impressive comparable to the best in class. The earphone loudness is about average, which will be more than enough for most users.

Given the acceptable price tag of the Nokia 6303i class, we find its audio output nothing short of excellent. Here are the results so you can see for yourselves.

Test	Frequency response	Noise level	Dynamic range	THD	IMD + Noise	Stereo crosstalk
Nokia 6303i classic	+0.07, -0.38	-84.5	90.4	0.134	0.028	-91.6
Nokia 6303 classic	+0.27, -0.08	-75.9	75.9	0.0075	0.042	-71.7
Nokia 5310 XpressMusic	+0.29, -1.69	-94.4	92.0	0.015	0.491	-73.8
Nokia X3	+0.07, -0.44	-88.3	88.3	0.0067	0.016	-89.0
Nokia 5230	+0.03, -0.05	-86.7	86.5	0.0033	0.016	-84.0
Nokia 5530 XpressMusic	+0.11, -0.84	-90.9	90.8	0.010	0.454	-90.6
Samsung M7500 Emporio Armani	+0.86, -6.28	-80.1	80.1	0.017	0.134	-73.9
Sony Ericsson W508	+7.30, -2.18	-85.9	84.7	0.0052	0.020	-84.7

Nokia 6303i classic frequency response graph

You can learn more about the whole testing process here.