JWD GM300

Seemingly good things come in cheap packages, but they’re not always good. Good things often come in small packages, but they’re not always cheap. But recently, I actually found something that’s small, cheap and actually not all that bad.

The JWD GM300 looks like a cheap MP3 player. It even has “digital player” written right below its tiny screen. But below that, you’ll find a number pad just like a mobile phone. Why would you need all that in an MP3 player? That’s because the GM300 isn’t just an MP3 player, it’s also a mobile phone. And a fully functional one at that!

But before I start firing off the features that the GM300 does have, I’ll quickly get out of the way the features that it doesn’t have. It doesn’t have a color screen, it doesn’t have GPRS or MMS, it doesn’t have a camera and it doesn’t have Bluetooth or Infrared. So, yeah, this isn’t an all-in-one phone, but it still has so many features, it deserves credit. Other then these things, the GM300 has everything you can think of in a mobile phone and mp3 player combo. Everything!

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This player is under 3.5 inches high and an almost too narrow at just 1.25 inches. While still being fairly thick at around half an inch, the overall dimensions of the phone make it tiny! Easy to tuck away, easy to handle. Extremely lightweight at around 50gms!

The screen is a small 1.4-inch (diagonal) square. It is a monochrome display with not too high a resolution, but it still makes extremely effective use of whatever real estate it does have. Fully labeled soft keys, multiple lines of text, iconic menus (although they do look too ugly), and it also has seven different backlight colors which are ‘ancient’ in today’s standards.

The keypad has a somewhat-fancy design with a capsule-like shape at the center column. Its not really a good design; the center column keys get misaligned with the adjacent keys, making it a little difficult to get used to it instantly. There is a bit of an issue with the yes, no and cancel keys which also double as soft keys. The yes and no buttons can be soft keys – Sony Ericsson does it too – but the C key? It took me a while to get used to that. In addition to the main keys, there’s also a three-way jog dial on the right side. It’s actually a rocker that goes up and down and also clicks.

The interface is quite inspired by the older Nokia Series 40 (6610, 7210 etc.) which is a good thing, because everyone knows that UI so there’s almost no learning curve involved when getting to use this phone. Like I said, this is a fully functional phone with everything you can think of: SMS (with full T9), call waiting, internal phonebook, calendar, calculator and even a game!
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The GM300 has a speaker and it’s actually delivers very good quality. It obviously doesn’t have good lows, but the highs and mids are fine. On the top, the phone has a standard 3.5mm stereo jack so you can use any pair of headphones you want with it.

Call quality from the GM300 is okay, but it isn’t as loud as one would expect it to be in this city. I couldn’t speak standing on the footpath, I had to walk to my car and get inside and then make the call. Also, despite the advancement in microphones, the one on this phone is not as effective as it should be, given the small size of the phone. I had to move the phone down while speaking to level the mic with my mouth.

There’s also a standard mini-USB slot on the top of the phone. The phone operates in USB Mass Storage mode so you can just drag and drop music, but this doesn’t happen automatically. When connected, you need to go deep into the settings menu to activate the ‘Pendrive’ function to enable Mass Storage mode. Most phones give you the choice the moment you stick the cable in, but not the GM300.

The phone comes with a microSD memory card slot which can take upto 1GB cards. It comes with a 128MB card, which is a great thing for it’s price.

What’s an MP3 player without FM radio? The GM300 has a built-in radio with space presets. It also has a voice recorder.

Battery life of the GM300 is a mixed bag. On average use of the music player and a fair amount of calling (around an hour), the battery was almost depleted at the end of the day. That doesn’t signal good battery life, but fortunately it supports USB recharging, so I was able to charge it at home as well as at work and avoided the phone from dying on me completely.

For Rs. 5000, this phone does offer a good set of phone features, a full music player, FM radio, voice recorder, thumb drive and all of that with expandable memory capacity upto 1GB. However, it doesn’t have good battery life, and call quality/volume is also questionable. It doesn’t look all that good, but it’s extremely small and easy to use.

Is it worth recommending? Not really, because for around Rs. 3,000 more you’ll be able to pick up one of these great all-in-one mobile phones that do everything that this phone can. So no, the GM300 isn’t really good value for money, but it’s still cool. Besides, which other phone do you know is this small and has so many features?