Review on Nokia 6300 4G: Unlocked, Dual SIM, WiFi Hotspot, Social Apps, Google Maps & Assistant (Light Charcoal) by Ari Tanner

Nokia missed an opportunity to be successful with this phone. Multi-band 4G support, available storage and a decent processor mean this phone can support many features. However, the KaiOS operating system is buggy, poorly maintained and clumsy. I've tried contacting Nokia and Kaitech directly for issues I've had and customer support is almost non-existent. The phone can sync calendar and email with built-in Google support. ActiveSync is also a recommended protocol but does not appear to be supported. According to Nokia, KaiOS doesn't support it at all, but the phone does, so it's confusing. When trying to sync with my Office365 account with the correct settings and credentials, the phone returns the error "incorrect username or password". I have confirmed with my company's IT department that the settings are correct and the features are enabled - this is an operating system issue. The sync from Google to Gmail seems flawless and fast enough. Syncing with Google Calendar is a pathetic mistake. After trying multiple times to sync my calendar with the status bar showing syncing but nothing happening, I finally resorted to clearing my calendar and entering the events manually one by one. This seemed to fix the problem, but I have to wonder at what point the sync decides to stop working again. Alarm clocks are not activated on time. You are constantly 6 hours behind the set time. Nokia replied that I am either setting them up incorrectly or need to factory reset the phone and try again. The solution, which works in most cases, is to set the phone not to automatically sync the date and time. Setting the time zone manually fixes the problem. Usually. If an alarm goes off at the wrong time, I can remove it and add it back and it will usually work correctly. Not knowing if an alarm will go off at the right time is a major problem for those who rely on alarms. In direct sunlight, the screen is difficult to see unless the brightness is set to maximum. Which you then have to reduce indoors if you don't want to go blind. A TFT display improves this and extends battery life. Speaking of which, the battery life really isn't that great. If you want a phone that lasts about a week on a single charge, look elsewhere. I charge this phone every night with very little use. Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi calling are great. Switching calls over WiFi to cellular can be tricky at times and result in some missed calls, but I've found that as long as I have good LTE service there's no problem. You can only remap one button. The left button is always for notifications and the right button is always for the camera, unless I could find a setting to change that anyway. The KaiOs store is a joke. There are a few useful apps, but by far the majority of them are ad-filled games that are just remakes of other games out there. The phone is bigger than you think a regular phone will be. If you're looking for a small pocket phone, look elsewhere. It's not as big as a smartphone, but it's still tall. Google Assistant works well, which is good since it's the only effective way to use text messaging or email. Text recognition works better than some other feature phones, but there really isn't much to brag about. You can type messages quickly if you're aware of its quirks, but the biggest complaint I have is that you can't set it as the default input method. Even if you have it enabled in your settings, you still have to press the # key four times to switch to predictive input. This is more annoying than you think it should be. If Nokia dropped KaiO, updated its Series30 or Series40 operating systems and returned to its roots, they would be much more competitive in the mobile phone market. Instead of trying to rebrand nostalgic devices, either re-launch an outdated device with 4G and WiFi support, or build something better from scratch. There are many "dumb phones" out there, but having a candy bar-style phone that supports Wi-Fi calling, Office integration, and a useful app store, yet is reasonably sized feels like a unicorn . If there is anyone familiar with the Nokia 301 it would be an almost perfect phone to add new features and re-release.