Lightweight Smartphone is ideal for messaging

The latest offering from Nokia is easily balanced on the knee as it can now open flat to 180 degrees.

Finnish cellphone-maker Nokia has a good track record in making slick, high-end products, and the 9300 Smartphone continues the theme.

I used to own its predecessor the 9200, and while I have fond memories of it, I now can't believe I used to lug the thing round. Holding the 9200 to your ear was like making a call on one of the first Motorola "brick" phones - you looked ridiculous and your hand would eventually ache.

The 9300 is an impressive overhaul, style-wise. It's nearly half the size of the 9200, but all the best parts remain - the landscape colour screen that's revealed when you open the clamshell phone, the full QWERTY keyboard, and the software set that has made the 9200 so useful to the corporate set.

The phone can now also open flat to 180 degrees, which is good for resting it on your knee.

But the 9300 exists in a competitive market and while it looks good, it comes in a little under-powered.

The lack of wi-fi functionality is annoying as the 9300's screen is particularly suited to web surfing.

The device could really be used for accessing the web on a casual basis at wireless hotspots or over office wireless networks, but instead users will rack up mobile data charges.

The chunkier 9500 is selling overseas and has wi-fi support.

It does have Bluetooth connectivity, though, and this works fine - I was able to pair the 9300 with both Pocket PC and Palm devices and swap information.

The 9300 uses Vodafone's GPRS network for mobile data rather than the new 3G, high-speed data network.

Still, graphics-light webpages load swiftly and file download times are reasonable. For example, a 340-kilobyte text file downloaded from benchmark site Toast.net in 38 seconds.

An 877-kilobyte image took two minutes to download.

The 9300 boasts the familiar office suite, which is capable of displaying PDF files, Word, Powerpoint and Excel spreadsheets and generating documents as well.

With 80 megabytes of onboard storage, there's plenty of room on the 9300 for documents, email and text messages and even small amounts of video and audio.

There's also a removable 128MB Multimedia Card for extra capacity, but I'd have preferred to have seen an SD slot, as those cards are more pervasive.

The phone is particularly good when it comes to messaging. There's a nice integrated client that takes care of text messaging, multimedia messaging (PXT), email and even faxes. It also has a loud, clear speaker-phone and is ideal for phone conferencing - you can hold five-way calls.

While the 9200's keys were separated and raised, the 9300's keyboard is one smooth panel. People with stubby fingers will have trouble touch-typing on it, but composing documents is generally easy.

It would have been nice if the keyboard was illuminated for low-light conditions, but that would probably have put more strain on the battery.

The 9300 certainly doesn't push the limits in terms of functionality. You'll get more flexibility from the range of smartphones operating on the new Windows Mobile 5.0 platform. But it does most things a busy executive would like.

There's even a free copy on the 9300 of a motivational e-book that has Donald Trump telling us the rich don't work for money.

"I don't do it for the money. I've got enough - much more than I'll ever need. I do it to do it," he writes.

The question is, does Don do it on a Nokia 9300?

Smartphone 9300

Pros: Good screen quality; solid software suite; stylish design.
Cons: No wi-fi, 3G or SD card support.
Price: $1249
Herald rating: 7/10