JWD GM300

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?