When I had the ASUS M303 for review, one of my first thoughts was how unconventional it appeared.  The size was just right, never too hard to find in a cluttered bag, and not too awkward to be left hanging on my neck with the aid of a strap.  I wished the color was not shiny black, since I often found myself wiping away finger marks on the exterior of the phone. 

The clam-shell phone had an antenna, a camera, a flashlight, a one-way sub-window display (where checking out your looks is easier) and play back, forward and pause buttons.  On the left side of the phone were the earphone jack, the main and scroll keys.  On the other side was a mini SD port.

When I opened the ASUS M303 I was greeted by a moving picture with audio.  I liked taking a look at it again and again so I kept turning the phone on and off.  When I turned the phone off I saw another animated icon.  This feature can be controlled in the phone’s Media Center menu. 

In the Media Center menu I also saw, together with the animation sub-menu, the MP3 player sub-menu, the Java games, sub-menu, the Image gallery sub-menu and the Music sub-menu.  When I held the phone in my palm it felt utterly comfortable.  It fit my hand just right and it was so light!  The keypad was well spaced and it never intimidated a new user like me.  Its 5-key navigation key had an engraved short cut which was helpful for a beginner like me.

When I scrolled through the menu, I found the shortcuts useful and very helpful.  Another fascinating feature of the phone was a baby’s voice actually announcing the numbers as I pressed the corresponding keys.  This feature quickly became my favorite!  It could also be turned off if I needed the “baby” to be quiet.

I wanted to take advantage of the phone’s 1.3 megapixel camera by taking video shots but the ASUS M303 required a mini SD before I could do so.  Fortunately, the phone still allowed me to take pictures and store the images in the handset’s memory, which was 4 MB in capacity.  The phonebook could store up to 300 names, 300 messages and 100 calendar events.  The phone has 260K colors, 1.8" TFT LCD with 128 x 160 pixels.  The images I took were transferred via USB cable. 

ASUS claims its phone is compatible with Bluetooth and has Infrared capability.

The USB cable provided also came in handy in transferring MP3 files.  This was where the play back, forward and pause buttons came into use.  The ASUS M303 also came with an earphone, which is a better alternative to letting the sound pass through the phone’s speaker.  The latter, by the way, diminished the quality of the MP3 file when I tried it. 

It’s a good idea to first install the ASUS M303 program before transferring MP3 files.  Installing took me a few minutes and enabled me also to edit images with the pre-designed enhancements using my PC. 

The sub-window display at the exterior of the phone was helpful not only when I played MP3 files but also when I sent and received messages.  The SMS can actually be read from the sub-window display.  Callers could also be screened using the Picture ID calling feature.  The phone also had Internet browsing, GPRS and MMS capability; in fact, this phone could pass as a practical phone for everyone. 

At times I found the ASUS M303 desktop to be very cluttered.  The screen was actually large enough but I found it crowded even when it only displayed the basic icons.  I discovered that by pressing the enter button of the navigation key, I could make all the icons vanish altogether.

The only problem I really had with this phone was in composing text messages.  I had a tough time trying to edit the messages I wanted to send.  Given time though, I probably would be comfortable enough to text with confidence using this phone.