The Nokia 6301 doesn't offer a flash or a self-portrait mirror.
The 2-megapixel camera takes pictures in six resolutions and three quality settings. Other features include night and panoramic modes, a self timer, a multishot mode, five color effects, brightness and white balance controls, and a digital zoom. The camcorder shoots clips in two resolutions with sound. Editing features are similar to the still camera. Clips meant for multimedia messages are capped at 20 seconds; otherwise you can shoot for as long as the available memory permits. The Nokia 630 offers about 30MB of internal memory but you'll also find a 512MB microSD card in the box. Photo quality was pretty poor for a 2-megapixel camera. Images had a lot of noise and colors were washed out.
The Nokia 6301 had disappointing photo quality.
The Nokia 6301's music player is standard for a Nokia phone. The spartan interface is limited to a couple of wallpaper options, but features include repeat and shuffle modes, an equalizer, an airplane mode, playlists, and stereo widening. You'll also find an FM radio, but you must use a wired headset as an antenna.
You can personalize the Nokia 6301 with a selection of wallpaper, color themes, screensavers, and alert tones. You can download more options with the 6301's WAP 2.0 Web browser. The Nokia 6301 offers Macromedia Flash Lite 2.0 for your surfing. The Nokia 6301 offers two games: Pac-Man and World Series of Poker.
Performance
We tested the tri-band (GSM 850/1800/1900) Nokia 6301 in San Francisco using T-Mobile service. Call quality was quite good on the whole; voices sounded natural, and the volume level was satisfactory. We didn't encounter any interference, but we noticed it could take a few minutes to get a signal when we came out of a subway station. On their end callers said we sounded fine, though a few people said the phone picked up some background noise. Automated calling systems presented us with few problems.
Wi-Fi calls were excellent with crystal clear audio. It sounded as if we were using a landline phone and our friends couldn't tell we were using a cell phone either. We picked up a slight conversation lag during Wi-Fi calls but that's typical on other HotSpot @Home phones. It almost sounded as if our friends were speaking haltingly, but it was very minimal.
Speakerphone calls were fine, though quality was diminished from regular calls. The volume was fine but we had to place the phone upside down to get maximum output from the rear-facing speaker. Callers could understand us most of the time, but we had to be in a quiet place in order to be heard.
The Nokia 6301 has a rated battery life of 3.5 hours talk time and 14.5 days standby time. We had a tested talk time of 5 hours and 11 minutes. According to FCC radiation tests, the Nokia 6301 has a digital SAR of 0.71 watts per kilogram.