In a rather surprising announcement, Nokia today made public the future availability of Nokia 6300i, which comes as an improved version of the 6300 model, one of the most popular Nokia handsets from the mid to low-end category (released more than one year ago).

I say "surprising" not really in the positive meaning of the word, as the new device is only slightly improved when compared to the original 6300. Even more, 6300i is kind of the same handset as the 6301 model, released this month. Which means we now have three Nokia phones that look alike and bring about the same features. Not a bad thing after all, but maybe Nokia should have focused more on bringing really new phones than just improving old ones.

What Nokia 6300i offers and 6300 does not is Wi-Fi connectivity (for fast Web browsing and fast data transfer speeds), a fully integrated VoIP client and even Nokia Maps. Pretty cool, that's for sure, but, as I said, a completely new phone to offer these features would have been better.

The rest of 6300i's specs include a 2 inch TFT screen with 16 million colors and a 240 x 320 pixels resolution, a 2 Megapixel camera with video recording, Music player (supporting MP3, MP4, WMA, AAC, ACC+, and eAAC+), FM stereo radio with RDS, Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP, miniUSB, Java MIDP 2.0, WAP 2.0 and Opera Mini browsers, Push to talk, and the same not-so-great 860 mAh Li-Ion battery that can only provide about 3 hours of talk-time and up to 340 hours of stand-by time.

The new-old Nokia 6300i will be available starting the second quarter of the year, in a grey/metallic color, for an approximate retail price of 175 Euro ($270), before taxes and subsidies.