While smartphone market surges, feature phones still make up the greater share of the total mobile phone sales worldwide. Therefore, it makes sense for a titan like Nokia to launch a phone that offers all the goodness of a smartphone at the price of a feature phone. Enter the new Asha 501, launched in India recently by the company's CEO Stephen Elop. This smart feature phone (as Nokia calls its Asha handsets) is an important device for the company, especially since Android devices are getting cheaper by the day (case in point being Samsung Galaxy Star and Intex Cloud X3).
So, does the new Nokia Asha 501 has what it takes to beat low-priced droids and rule the budget handset market? We had the same question when we got our hands on the device. Let's see what we found out in this review...
Design:
Nokia Asha 501 is an attractive little gadget that catches the eye as soon as you set your sight on it. Just like the Lumia 520, it betrays its price tag considering the quality of material used in building it. Its designing has been done well, such that the polycarbonate back and glass front merge seamlessly at the sides.
The front has a single hardware key (the Back button), while right side houses the volume rocker and Power/Lock key. On top are the microUSB port, charger inlet and earphone jack, whereas the left side is bare. Flip it to the back to check out the small rear camera and the key to remove the back.
Overall, we are quite impressed by the design of the Asha 501, which resembles the Lumia series to a considerable degree.
Hardware:
Coming to the specs, the Asha 501 has a 3-inch screen with 320x240p resolution. The display is decent, with good colours and contrast. The phone has 128MB internal storage and 64MB RAM, figures that Android users will scoff at. However, these numbers are decent considering the platform that powers the handset. You get microSD support up to a healthy 32GB capacity, with a free 4GB card coming out of the box.
On the back, you get a 3.15MP camera, but there is no LED flash and front-facing unit. Connectivity options in the device include 2G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0 and microUSB. While the proprietary charger (2mm pin) comes in the box, the phone also supports microUSB charging.
Software:
This is where the magic happens. Nokia Asha 501 runs on the all-new Asha 1.0 platform, a mobile operating system that is heavily influenced by the now-dead MeeGo OS. The software is based on lots of swipes (thus explaining the absence of a Home or Options key) and even supports multitasking in its own unique way.
To unlock the phone, you can either click the Power/Lock key or tap twice on the touchscreen in quick succession. As the screen lights up, you swipe either to the left or right in order to open the apps menu; a swipe to either side from there brings you to the 'other' home screen called Fastland(more on that coming up).
What about apps, we wondered... Well, the revamped Asha 1.0 platform brings a host of apps with it, though many buyers excited about WhatsApp will be disappointed. However, what you do get here are applications like Facebook, Twitter, document reader, Weather, a combined mailbox, notes, calculator, calendar, music player and several others. Nokia is offering 40 free EA games optimized for the OS with this phone as well. If you want more, then you can head to Apps and AppNow. These two are dedicated app stores that stock several applications, like WeChat and third-party web browsers, music players and the likes, along with a host of games (paid as well as free).
All apps are easy to navigate through and you just need to swipe left or press the Back button whenever you want to go return to the previous page or close the app altogether. Each time you are about to close a running app, you are asked if you want to exit, thus avoiding chances of accidentally closing it.
Coming to multitasking, you get Fastlane - a home screen that shows the recent apps you have used, along with reminders. It is quite simple to use, with the whole list accessible via a scroll down the screen. However, the sad part is that you cannot pick up from where you left off when you close an app and each time you need to start from the beginning.
You also have a Notification Bar (just swipe down from top opens it). Here you get push notifications about unread mails and SMSs, missed calls and four toggles (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, mobile data and Silent profile). When the phone is not in use, it displays the time, date, and information like unread SMSs and missed calls on an interface that Nokia calls Glance Screen.
We feel that the platform has a lot of strengths, though it needs to be a little more polished before it can take the fight to budget Androids and score a win.
Performance:
The new Asha 501 smart feature phone by Nokia is not the fastest phone around and it does not pretend to be so. It is a budget device that offers a decent smartphone experience, with no lag. The hardware and software of the phone are tightly integrated, ensuring that the user experience is smooth and largely without the issues that plague cheap handsets (poor build quality, frequent hanging etc).
Instead, we like that the low-power Asha 501's capacitive touchscreen is responsive and the keyboard layout in different apps is well designed. Though we punched the wrong key while typing a few times, once you get used to it, the keyboard becomes easy to handle. Despite the software being so new, we had no trouble at all, meaning that it is well optimized for the tasks it is supposed to handle.
Camera Asha 501's 3.2MP rear camera takes pictures that offer good colours but do not display sufficient contrast and details. However, if you are going to upload most of the images you take on social networking sites, then it will be good enough for the job.
Audio in the phone is quite loud, though not exactly crystal clear. Viewing videos is certainly not a good experience on a device with such a small display and resolution. Its battery lasted nearly a day and a half on a single charge when 2G internet was kept turned most of the time. Usage pattern included a couple of hours of internet browsing, nearly 5-6 hours of music playback, an hour each of gaming and videos and approximately half an hour tinkering with other apps.
While we like several things in this phone, we had trouble setting up email accounts. The phone gave a lot of trouble while setting up Gmail and Yahoo accounts automatically, thus forcing us to do it manually. Similarly, we could not import contacts easily on the device. The absence of 3G meant that we could not use high speed internet on the go (2G remains painfully slow for our taste). Another thing we did not like was that all apps start afresh each time we have to exit them.
Rivals:
Budget Android phones are available aplenty in the market today, with Samsung Galaxy Star being the closest rival to Asha 501. The case against Star is that its 1GHz processor, 512MB RAM and 4GB internal storage (theoretically much superior to Asha 501) do not give it enough muscle to render a smooth user experience. However, it has a bigger selection of apps, though such a low powered device cannot make full use of the functionality of the robust Android platform and there is usually a lot of lag in this device when it is filled with several apps.
This is the strong point of Asha 501, which did not show any signs of lag during our review. (We asked a Samsung salesperson at a New Delhi outlet which of the two is better and he/she pointed towards the Nokia handset, though he/she never said anything out loud.)
Conclusion:
Nokia Asha 501 is an exciting prospect for people who are graduating from feature phones to internet-connected handsets for the first time. It is well stocked with apps and features and offers all the functionalities of an entry-level smart-device. We like the seamless design as well as how the software and hardware complement each other at all times.
Without a doubt, we would recommend the Nokia Asha 501 to buyers who are looking for a phone under Rs 5,000.
What we like:
No lag
Unique user experience
Design
Price
Battery life
What we don't like:
Below average camera quality
Some key apps missing
No true multitasking
No 3G
Market price: Rs 4,999
.jpg)
0 comments