While Smartphone sales have increased across the globe with Samsung, Apple, and other players making headlines, feature phones still make up a greater share of the total mobile phone sales worldwide. With Nokia competing favorably in the smartphone race with the release of its Lumia series, the company still maintains the lead in the budget phone category and continues to provide value with prices of budget phones like the Asha series that also provides the goodies that smartphones offer.
Nokia Asha 501 is a smart feature phone and it reveals the company’s playful side when it comes to budget phones with sleek design and colours. Anyone who sees the Nokia Asha 501 will love the device, just like I did when I first set my eyes on it; this prompted me to get my hands on it and got me wondering if this device has what it takes to lead the budget handset market. Let’s take a close look in the review……
The device is so attractive and cute in the hand. It is compact, weighs 98g with a dimension of 99.2x58x12.1mm and does not follow the big screen trend. It has a scratch-resistant glass screen and polycarbonate changeable covers.
The front panel is a 3-inch display with a single key (Back button), while the power/lock button and the volume rocker are on the right side. On top are the microUSB port, 2.5mm charger inlet and earphone jack. The back of the device includes a camera placed at the centre towards the top and just at the bottom of the rear panel is a button that can be pressed to remove the back panel. The back panel is exchangeable and can be replaced with other bright colours like Cyan, Yellow, Red, Green, white and black colours.
The Nokia Asha 501 has a 3-inch capacitive display screen with resolution of 240x320pixels and has a pixel density of 133PPI. The display is touch responsive, has a brightness control, RGB stripe, Screen double tap and readable under the sun with great viewing angles.
Hardware:
The device has 3.2MP camera with resolution of 2048×1536 (changeable) behind.
Secondary Camera: No
Flash: No
RAM size: 64MB
internal storage: 128MB (expandable up to 32GB with a microSD)
Connectivity options: 2G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0, MicroUSB and supports MicroUSB charging
Battery: Removable, 1200mAH and 48 days on standby (Nokia claims)
The Nokia Asha 501 runs on the all-new platform called the Asha 1.0 platform. The software posses’ high gesture controls like swipe feature and supports multitasking. To unlock the phone, you can either click the power/Lock button beside the phone or double tap the screen. As the screen lights up, you swipe either to the left or right to open apps menu
Swiping the screen from either side, from any app or game takes you directly to the Fastlane, a new feature unveiled for the Asha 501. The Fastlane feature gives a quick overview of your activity, it collectively shows all the recent apps in a list form according to dates.
There is a notification bar at the top which can be pulled down to see SIM information and adjust Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, mobile data and sound profile settings. A little downside is that there are limited personalization options and one can only change wallpapers and sound profile.
The Nokia Asha 501 is rich with apps like facebook, WeChat, 2go, Line and a host of others with Whatsapp said to be available shortly. Games also come pre-installed and are Java based.
On a final note, the Asha 501 score high in some areas such as design, build quality, user-interphase and price when you consider the features it packs. Its cons include the limited personalization options, poor low-light camera feature.
For people looking to buy a feature phone that delivers an experience close to a smartphone, the Nokia Asha 501 is a decent option as it gives great value for money. Click here for more details on Nokia Asha 501