Smartphones may have the biggest share of the pie in the phone industry, but feature phones still have a foothold in the market and Nokia’s C2-03 is one of them. There aren’t very many feature phones out there or to be exact, there aren’t many that stand out. However, the Nokia C2-03 has a strong case as it is able to run two SIM cards at once. So it’s time we found out more about the phone.
Design
Measuring at 4.06 x 2.02 x 0.67 inches, the Nokia C2-03 is by no means one of the smaller phones out there. At a thickness of 0.67 inches, it is definitely going to bulge out of your pocket. Holding the phone also ends up giving you that cheap and plasticky feeling you never want with a phone. Although we won’t take the risk of dropping the phone we are glad to tell you that its curved edges are a real delight in the hands. Another plus would be the sliding mechanism as it feels reliable. On the right side of the phone you will find the volume rocker as well as the lock/unlock key. They are both well exposed which means they were easy to press or in the case of the lock/unlock key, easy to slide. The SIM card slot is found on the left. Meanwhile, on the top you will find the standard audio jack together with the microUSB and charging ports. Although solid, the slide out numeric keypad has tiny buttons and they crammed up. So if you are into text messaging all the time, you will find it to be a bit annoying. The Nokia cC2-03 doesn’t boast a 4 inch screen but rather comes with a 2.6 inch QVGA touchscreen. It is a resistive touchscreen, so there are the plus and the negatives that we will see later. On the back of the Nokia C2-03 is a 2MP camera minus flash and autofocus, something you would expect from a featurephone.
Features
Being a feature phone means we don’t have much to talk about in terms of CPU as you don’t exactly expect a dual core processor in one of them, and so is the case with the Nokia C2-03. So, we will jump right into the interface. This phone runs on the Series 40 platform that although offers quite a bit of customization, but there are some things that could have been better for instance the design itself. The interface looks as crammed as the numeric keypad that we saw previously. The added fact that the screen is just 2.6 inches big that crammed feeling will get to you after a while as it makes the interface rather unattractive. Nevertheless, there are some up sides like the fact that we can place our favorite widgets and shortcuts on the home screen. This interface doesn’t feel too great when used with a touchscreen display as to get things done on this phone we would face a bumpy ride every time. If Nokia had kept the classic D-pad instead, we might have had good things to say about the Nokia C2-03.
Other than that, the other basic features like messaging, calendar and alarm clock are pretty simple to use. One cool thing about the contacts list that’s worth mentioning is how the results update in real time when you search for a name in the list. The Nokia C2-03 comes preinstalled with Nokia Maps. You can use the app offline as long as you already have the maps downloaded over the web previously. There are not too many apps installed with this phone which gives you all the more reason to check out Nokia’s online store, Ovi. You can get a wide variety of apps and even games for free.
As mentioned earlier, the Nokia C2-03 has a small 2.6 inch resistive QVGA touchscreen. So you can’t expect much in terms of responsiveness. The screen also lacks brightness which means if you are going to use it under sunlight it’s going to be super hard. Making things worse, the screen has rather inaccurate color gradients no thanks to its low color depth.
The highlight of the Nokia C2-03 is obviously the fact that it can work with 2 SIM cards at the same time. The primary card goes under the battery as most other phones while the other one goes on the right of the phone. This means you can change cards on the go and you get to choose what services you want each SIM card to do. So the primary SIM takes care of calling while the secondary one can perhaps handle all other stuff.
So on the rear of the Nokia C2-03 is a 2MP camera which is very basic to say the least. There is no flash or autofocus to go with the camera. We are sure that you will stay away from it as long as you can unless a desperate moment crops up although there’s doubt the camera can help much even then. The photos taken with this camera produces pictures that lacked detail and there was a large amount of digital noise too. Video recording wasn’t much better either as the resolution of 176 by 144 pixels at 15 fps makes you want to stay away from it too.
For the internet experience on the Nokia C2-03 it was a surprising one. The Nokia Browser that comes out of the box just didn’t turn up. Many attempts at making it work just failed. So we downloaded another browser on our own accord and we decided to stick to the Opera Mini 6.1. No thanks to issues with navigation, surfing the web wasn’t a great experience at all. So the only way to go online on the Nokia C2-03 is via EDGE 2G. Other than that, you don’t get the array of connectivity options you get with smartphones, but rather you get only Bluetooth.
So you might have heard quite a few negatives already up till now, but all that changes with the in-call sound quality you get with the Nokia C2-03. This is because we got some clear and loud voices in the earpiece. However, our friend on the line could not hear us so well but not to the extent of being unable to make out the words. The 1020mAh battery on the Nokia C2-03 isn’t great though as you only get about 5 hours of continuous talk time which is not the best for a feature phone.
Pros and Cons
The best thing about the Nokia C2-03 has to be that it works with 2 SIM cards simultaneously. The in-call quality was also top notch.
The fact that Nokia Browser is totally unusable is unacceptable. Other than that, the camera on the Nokia C2-03 is not up to par with other feature phones.
Conclusion
So the Nokia C2-03 only has one very strong point and that is the dual SIM card capability. Since this feature can be found in other phones as well, we suggest you look elsewhere before coming back to get this phone.
