We tend to ignore Nokia's cheap and cheerful Series 40 platform phones here on All About Symbian, but the launch of the new C3 brought, in theory, a handset slap bang into contention with a Symbian-powered smartphone, in this case the E63, itself over a year old now. Which means that a blow by blow comparison should be very interesting - can the £80 C3 (currently a Vodafone exclusive in the UK) threaten the lowly (for the smartphone world) E63?
Read on in the full article.
the e63 does have 3g
nokia's transflective screens are great. i recently bought a 6303i and the screen is perfectly visible in strong sunlight.
A dollar (and I would suspect its probably a bit more) is a LOT in a device this cheap.
Especially given that this is likely to sell by the million in the developing world (sadly, of course, screen visibility in the bright light in many of those countries will be an even bigger issue that in the... err.. occasionally clowdy UK for example 😊 ).
I own C3, bought in Indonesia the day nokia launched it for a mere (around) US$96. I also own Nokia N81 and also E61i.
I must said that C3 is not on the same league as Nokia E63 because it's use the S40. but for the intended price, and compare to lots of other non-smartphone the C3 is doing very well. C3 is also better compared to the non-smartphone because it have a big screen and good build quality. I must say that the C3 build is on par with the E series phone such as the E71.
If you're gonna use the Nokia C3 for heavy messaging such as SMS/MMS/Email/YM/MSN messanger/Google Talk/Ovi Chat/FB/twitter, and light web browsing, then Nokia C3 really sure doing it's job very well. but nokia C3 is not well designed for compete with the smartphone league.
Anyway,
the Nokia Messaging Service or short for NMS still have a lot of bug. I fond out that my C3 occasionally being cut from YM/Google/MSN/Ovi. This problem irritate me a lot because I bought C3 just for using the YM and push mail.
As for the Internet connection, I really hate the C3 option is very limited. I wish nokia polish this part more.
All in all, I really recomend this C3 to anyone that want to bought the non-smartphone. but if you have the smartphone DNA, don't buy C3. You'll be very disappointed.
Noted re:3G - I'd forgotten that we'd turned it off on our E63! Corrected in the text. Thanks.
I wonder if the Wifi 'bug' is just a cynical attempt to make you use Vodafone's data services (similar to Virgin with their PAYG E63 where every shortcut on the homescreen takes you onto the internet). I guess the occasional 'random' connections are updating Twitter/Facebook?
The suggested tariff for the C3 (added when you put the phone in your basket), it costs �1 a day for 15Mb of internet.
Whilst the phone is initially very cheap, it'll cost you �30 a month to run, for which you can get a far better deal on contract.
The C3 is a nice little thing. A massive hit with the teenage girls seen I bet. I was half considering it for QWERTY use on top of my touch screen main device but i'd rather do a few extra hours at work and get an E71 instead.
JCB_Digger wrote:I wonder if the Wifi 'bug' is just a cynical attempt to make you use Vodafone's data services (similar to Virgin with their PAYG E63 where every shortcut on the homescreen takes you onto the internet). I guess the occasional 'random' connections are updating Twitter/Facebook?I'm inclined to agree with you. When I read Steve's comments:The suggested tariff for the C3 (added when you put the phone in your basket), it costs �1 a day for 15Mb of internet.
Whilst the phone is initially very cheap, it'll cost you �30 a month to run, for which you can get a far better deal on contract.
... but current Vodafone firmware is presumed buggy and locks out Wi-Fi for browser use, incredibly...
... Has a disturbing tendency to go online at the slightest whim, without asking and for no apparent reason. Haven't worked out why yet! ...
... The Wi-Fi bug was the last straw, of course, completely foiling the whole point of putting Wi-fi in the C3 in the first place. I hope Nokia and Vodafone fix this, but I've no experience of firmware updates outside the Symbian world so can't really comment here....
Hmm anyways the C3 sounds a bit too cheap and nasty judging by Steve's write up. Does there not come a point where building a handset soo cheap makes it virtually unusable? I guess the C3 is just inside the boundary. Seems sad to me when a 1 year old phone out performs the new-comer, no matter how reasonable the price.
S.
While the E63 has no built-in GPS it does have bluetooth so using a separate Bluetooth GPS is certainly feasible to improve location accuracy.
steve_perry wrote:Hmm anyways the C3 sounds a bit too cheap and nasty judging by Steve's write up. Does there not come a point where building a handset soo cheap makes it virtually unusable? I guess the C3 is just inside the boundary. Seems sad to me when a 1 year old phone out performs the new-comer, no matter how reasonable the price.
S.
Not really, horses for courses. This is clearly aimed at schoolkids and impoverished students for whom messaging is the priority and suggesting it is unusable is a gross exaggeration. The market space in which the BB Curve is the aspirational phone, they are going after that market share.
are the two silver bits either side of the d-pad functional buttons or just for show?
Unregistered wrote:Not really, horses for courses. This is clearly aimed at schoolkids and impoverished students for whom messaging is the priority and suggesting it is unusable is a gross exaggeration. The market space in which the BB Curve is the aspirational phone, they are going after that market share.I fully understand about targeted markets etc. and if Nokia want to knock out a budget 'no frills' handset with just a few core features then fair enough I also don't have a problem with that either. What irritates me is when I read feedback such as:
Steve Litchfield wrote:Series 40, feels slow once you start doing something serious, like render a web page, browse the Ovi Store, or play a game. Maybe three times slower than S60 on the E63.
There really is no excuse other than penny pinching... In this day and age manufacturers like Nokia, should be able to produce a device that does not slow to a crawl even when doing the basics nevermind including the advanced stuff or multi-tasking.
S.
Unregistered wrote:are the two silver bits either side of the d-pad functional buttons or just for show?I'm guessing they are functional judging by the icons printed on the shell... the left silver button is to access contacts and the right silver button to access messages. I'm sure Steve can confirm.
S.
steve_perry wrote:IThere really is no excuse other than penny pinching... In this day and age manufacturers like Nokia, should be able to produce a device that does not slow to a crawl even when doing the basics nevermind including the advanced stuff or multi-tasking.
S.
Nokia are able to produce such devices, but they would be silly to do so at this price, or why would anyone buy their costlier products. There is an excuse, it's the oldest excuse of them all. Business.
Forget the multi-tasking, this is a budget S40 device, talking of which:
slitchfield wrote:
We tend to ignore Nokia's cheap and cheerful Series 40 platform phones here on All About Symbian, but the launch of the new C3 brought, in theory, a handset slap bang into contention with a Symbian-powered smartphone, in this case the E63
Well it is, as you say, an S40 phone and this website is AllAboutSYMBIAN, so no surprise S40 phones get ignored then. But to say it is "slap bang in contention" with E63, then to point out that it is 3 times slower and doesn 't multi-task is a bit daft. Nokia have ensured that there is no real contention, it's deliberate and logical.
Yes, the left silver button is for Communities, i.e. social contacts - bit weak, if you ask me - Contacts would have been better. Right is for Messaging, yes.
DeRegistered wrote:
Well it is, as you say, an S40 phone and this website is AllAboutSYMBIAN, so no surprise S40 phones get ignored then..
Not to be a nit picker but S40 is Symbian. Just a different distro than S60...
Jowls wrote:Not to be a nit picker but S40 is Symbian. Just a different distro than S60...
Very very wrong.
Jowls wrote:Not to be a nit picker but S40 is Symbian. Just a different distro than S60...
Series 40 is nothing WHATSOEVER to do with Symbian.
You're thinking of 'Series 80', the old Communicator interface.
Jowls wrote:Not to be a nit picker but S40 is Symbian. Just a different distro than S60...
Before not nit-picking it would be a good idea to check your facts. I'm sure Symbian Foundation would be shocked to learn that they've got to look after S40 too!
S40 is not a different distribution of Symbian, it's an entirely unrelated code base that just happens to have been created by the same parent that adopted Symbian. So they are not even blood relatives.
What is a "distro" anyway? Is it some kind of instant gravy product?
Unregistered wrote:What is a "distro" anyway? Is it some kind of instant gravy product?
A pathetic dining fad from the 1970s/80s where crappy cafes had aspirations as real restaurants but couldn't quite cut it.
The Wi-Fi problem has been fixed, to access the pre-installed Opera browers go to:
Menu > Apps > Extras > Collection > 'Internet' and their it is.
So really... Your review isn't fair on the C3. Which is a great phone.
We tend to ignore the cheap series Nokia phone gay here on the platform 40 All About Symbian, but the launch of the new C3 is, in theory, slap bang in the divergence in combination with Symbian technology, and in this case, E63, which is more than a year. This means that a piecemeal over should be very interesting.