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Here is the FoneArena review of the Dual SIM Touch and Type phone Nokia C2-03. This phone was announced in June and available in India from August 2011. Thus is a Dual SIM phone with Dual Standby. It runs on Nokia Series 40 6th Edition OS.

Box Contents :

Nokia C2-03 dual SIM mobile phoneNokia BL-5C 1020 mAh Li-Ion BatteryNokia Charger AC-3Nokia Stereo Headset WH-102Nokia 2 GB microSD CardData Connectivity Cable CA-101D

Hardware/Design :

The phone has nice curved design and good build quality. There is Nokia logo on top along with C2 on the top left corner. It has 2.6 inch (240 x 320 pixels) LCD transmissive touch screen display and a slide-out four row keyboard. The call and end keys are located below the display. The 4 row keyboard slides out.

The hot swappable second memory card slot is located on the left side.

The Volume rocker and the lock button are on the right side

The 3.5mm audio jack, Micro USB slot and the Nokia 2mm charger slots are on the top.

The 2MP camera is on the back with the speaker grill next to it.

When you open the back cover you can see 1020 mAh BL-5C battery and there are SIM card and the MicroSD card slots.

Software:

The C2-03 comes with S40 6th edition FP1 UI which supports both touch input and hardware input. There is no navi-pad and all the operations are carried out only by touch. The home screen is customizable with shortcuts such as SIM manager, Clock, Communities app, Shortcut bar, Radio and Media Timer and Web Search. The Goto button on the left opens a grid view of shortcuts. The left and right hotkey options are customizable too.

The Menu has Calendar, Contacts, Music, Internet, Messaging, Store, SIM Manger, Maps, Apps, Settings, Life tools and Photos.

Music Player and Radio :

The music player supports different formats like AAC, MP3, MP4, WAV and WMA. The music player comes with equalizer with presets like Rock, Pop, Jazz and Classical and two customizable presets. You can also create playlist and add songs. It has Bluetooth with A2DP support that lets you play music via Bluetooth headset. The Radio with RDS auto tunes the radio stations. There a recording button that lets you record the radio stations that are saved in aac format. The stations could also be set manually by selecting the frequency.

Apps and Games:

There are lots of apps in the phone such as communities, that lets you post to several accounts such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr. Other apps include Nokia Life Tools that offers information messages on several topics. The Maps app lets you search for an address offline even though it doesn’t have GPS.

There are lots of Games such as Golf Tour, Memorize, Music Guess, Nature Park, Picture Puzzle and Solitaire. Other utilities include World Clock, Calculator, Voice Recorder, To-do list, Notes, Countdown timer and Stopwatch. There is always Nokia App Store where you could download more applications. Some of the applications comes with the memory card that include, Bharat Matrimony, BookMyShow, eBay.in, NewsHunt, MobileESPN, ngpay, Quickr, Sulekha Local. These apps might differ based on your region.

Messaging and Contacts:

The Messaging has common features such as Create messages, Inbox, Conversations (Shows messages in conversation view), Sent items, Drafts and settings. The SIM card number is mentioned on each inbox messages and on the on-screen notification to let you know from which SIM the message is received. There are various mail options to choose from, like Ovi Mail, Yahoo mail, Gmail, Hotmail etc. The Chat services like Gtalk, Yahoo messenger, OVI and MSN are also available. The chats are categorized as conversations, online and offline.

The contacts show the names in the contact list with images. There are also options to set speed dial for contacts, sync your contacts with you OVI account, contact groups, copy or move contact from phone memory to SIM card.

Connectivity and Browser:

It has Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP that lets you stream music and transfer files to other devices. It has Nokia browser that has several tools to reduce image quality, set search engine, auto-fill details and view data usage. It also has Micro USB connectivity to transfer data from your PC.  This doesn’t have 3G or Wi-Fi. The Nokia X3-02 that we reviewed few months back had Wi-Fi and 3G but it it a bit costly when compared to this phone and it had single SIM card slot.

Camera :

The Nokia C2-03 has 2MP full focus camera There is also landscape format for capturing images. Other camera features include self timer and effects. Since there is no flash, image looks average in low lighting conditions. There is photo gallery with the option to view pictures even in the timeline mode.

Here are the camera samples (Click to enlarge)

Verdict :

The Nokia C2-03 has all the features you need such as Dual SIM support with Hot-Swap option. The Battery life is  satisfactory that lasts for 2 days in Dual SIM mode with few calls, Messaging, Music and Radio. The touch and type works well, you could also use the on screen keyboard to dial a number.Lack of dedicated camera button and the USB Charging options (That was available in the Nokia X3-02) are a bit disappointing.

Pros :

Nice Build QualityDual SIM with Dual StandbySIM card Hot-Swap optionTouch Screen and Slide out Keyboard

Cons:

No multitaskingNo Wi-FiNo USB Charging

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