Nokia C3-01 Touch and Type review

The Nokia C3-01 Touch and Type is the second Nokia phone to integrate a touchscreen and a conventional alphanumeric keyboard.

The device is aimed at users that want easy messaging on the go and social networking all in one small and convenient package.

While the Symbian S40 6th Edition-powered Nokia C3-01 is no way near as exciting as the Nokia N8, N9 or even the E7, it is still a relatively solid device that makes a good first impression with its classic candybar design (111x47.5x11mm) and its stainless steel chassis.

The C3-01 is also an exceptionally good-looking device and it also feels extremely lightweight in the hand, which was quite a surprise as feature phones are usually a little on the heavy side, but at 100g this really isn’t the case with the Nokia C3-01.

Sure, it might "only be a feature phone,” but the Nokia C3-01 looks and feels very much like a business-oriented mobile device and not just your run of the mill mobile phone.

And this is something that is sure to do it a lot of favours with many consumers in the UK – particularly, those that were fond of the Nokia 6700 classic and Nokia 6300.

Using the device, as you’d expect is very straightforward. Once you’ve booted it up, there’s a short delay and you’re brought to the homescreen. From here, you’re literally one click away from setting up Nokia’s Messaging 3.0, which features support for both email (SMTP, IMAP4, POP3) Twitter and Facebook.

However, it’s certainly worth registering an Ovi account if you don’t already have one so you can download apps, games and all the Ovi-branded services that Nokia provides, like Ovi Mail, Ovi Chat and Ovi Maps.

The UI, as we said, is pretty basic and won’t be giving the likes of HTC, Apple or RIM anything to worry about any time soon – but we think Nokia already knows this.

This is generally the same with the device’s stock browser, which while being relatively snappy, isn’t much to look at. The resolution is low, web pages look bad and are difficult to navigate and there’s no pinch-to-zoom, which is always a problem on touchscreen devices.

Nokia has also thrown in Opera Mini for good measure too. However, we found that the stock Nokia browser generally out-performed it terms of speed during testing and we also encountered more than a few errors when attempting to boot up Opera Mini, which is never a good sign…

There are still quite a few annoying S40 quirks present in the Nokia C3-01 that will be familiar to many a Nokia veteran. One such nuance is the constant notifications that pop up every time you attempt to access the internet or anything remotely web-related. We hate this “quirk” with a passion – it’s a massive, massive waste of time and is very annoying.

Like the vast majority of feature phones, the Nokia C3-01 uses a resistive and, therefore, less sensitive touchscreen display than its capacitive-screened counterparts.

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