Nokia C3 Review

In a nutshell: The Nokia C3 is a cut-price BlackBerry lookalike, and that's no bad thing! It offers a full QWERTY keyboard, mobile e-mail, a basic camera and a media player, plus Wi-Fi, Facebook and Twitter and excellent battery life. Available in Black, Blue, Gold or Pink.

The Nokia C3 is a budget version of the popular E71 and E72 BlackBerry lookalikes. What a great idea! A BlackBerry Curve for the price of a budget Pay as you Go phone! And in many ways the C3 delivers on its promise. It's certainly a smart looking phone. Plasticky, yes, but what did you expect at this price? The keyboard works well and the phone feels good in the hand.

The TFT display has been built to a budget, but it's no worse than the screen on the BlackBerry 8520. It has the same size and resolution (2.4 inches, 320 x 240 pixels). The camera's about as basic as you can get these days, so don't expect much from that. The phone does have an MP3 player, of course, and an FM radio, but pretty much every phone does these days. Don't look for GPS or 3G, because you won't find any high-end features on the C3.

There is one area where the C3 over-delivers, however, and that's connectivity. Not only does it have Bluetooth and USB, but it's also Wi-Fi enabled and has a 3.5mm audio jack too. The Wi-Fi could be handy for accessing the internet on your phone. The C5 has Facebook and Twitter apps that can be accessed from your home screen, but don't expect to do a lot of web browsing on such a small screen.

Battery life is truly excellent, with a very meaty 1320 mAh battery, and not too much work for it to do. Compared to high-end smartphones the C3 is like the Duracell Bunny! It's not so hot when it comes to memory though, with only 55MB onboard and no memory card included in the sales package. You'll need to spend a little extra to add a microSD card.

The C3 is very much a phone built to a budget. It's key selling point is the QWERTY keyboard and the fact that it looks like a BlackBerry. It does email well, has great battery life and has Wi-Fi. If that's what you're looking for, then you've found your perfect phone. If you want 3G or a high quality camera, then you need to spend more cash!

Features of the Nokia C3 include:

• 2 megapixel camera with 2x digital zoom
• QCIF video camera with 4x digital zoom
• Display: TFT, 262,000 colours, 240 x 320 pixels (2.4 inches)
• Music Player (mp3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA formats)
• FM radio with RDS support
• MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA ringtones / video ringtones
• Speakerphone
• Messaging: SMS, MMS, email (POP3, IMAP4 and SMTP protocols), Instant messaging, Nokia Xpress audio messaging
• Java™ MIDP 2.0 applications
• Games: Bounce, Sudoku, Block'd, Diamond Rush
• Internet: Web browser, Opera Mini browser, Facebook, Twitter, WAP, GPRS, EDGE
• Connectivity: WLAN 802.11b/g, Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR, micro-USB 2.0, 3.5 mm audio jack
• Memory: 55 MB plus microSD card slot (up to 8 GB supported)
• Vibration alert
• Quadband (850/900/1800/1900)
• Size: 116 x 58 x 13.6 mm
• Weight: 114g
• Battery: 1320 mAh Li-Ion
• Talktime: 7 hours
• Battery standby: 800 hours