Nokia Asha 501- New launch in Asha series

Nokia has recently launched Nokia Asha 501 mobile phone a new member of Asha series. Nokia Asha 501 is a budget phone at price tag of Rs. 4999/- (price at flipkart.com). Lets us take a look on its features , look and performance.

Nokia Asha 501 build –

Asha 501 is a dual sim phone (micro sim module) with 3 inch screen resolution of 240 x 320 pixels (TFT touch screen). Its dimensions are 99.2 x 58 x 12.1 mm (3.91 x 2.28 x 0.48 in). Nokia give a Lumia series look to Asha 501, that also feels premium and look good in hands. The matt-finished shell is inter-changeable and is comfortable to hold. The soft, rubberised texture offers good grip too. The volume rocker and power button take their place on the sides while the top houses the 3.5mm headphone jack, thin-pin charging port and microUSB port. There’s just a single ‘Back’ button at the bottom and nothing else. Around the back, we have a 3.1MP camera and a speaker opening at the bottom.

" Nokia Asha 501"

Nokia Asha 501 available in 6 colours Red, Black, White, Yellow, Cyan & Green. This colors scheme from Nokia are now very popular in young generations specially college going youths that started from Lumia series.

 

Nokia Asha 501 Hardware –

Asha 501 having 240×320 resolution TFT screen capacitive touch screen, It has 64MB RAM and 128MB internal memory that can be expanded up to 32GB using micro sd card (4GB card included in the box) . Low resolution and small screen size make it difficult to read texts in browsers and many apps. Asha 501 has 3.2 MP rear camera without LED flash (2048x 1500 p), no front camera.  For connectivity it has been provided wifi, bluetooth 3.0, GPRS (no 3G connectivity), usb 2.0 micro usb connector but without usb charging support, 3.5mm head set jack for audio out. Nokia has also packed FM Radio in the phone and there are sensors – proximity and accelerometer. The latter is being used by couple of fantastic applications like for composing music while shaking the phone and more. There is no GPS antenna for navigation.

"Nokia Asha 501-rear"

It has 1200 mAh battery as per Nokia battery has backup of

  •  Standby time (2G): 624 h
  • Talk time (2G): 17 h
  • Music playback time: 56 h

Front side Asha 501 has only a small back button, no any buttons are available, at side power and volume control button are present.

Nokia Asha 501 Features –

Asha 501 runs over Nokia’s own Asha OS platform version 1.0, Android lovers may disappoint as this OS not as rich in apps and many features those are available many budget android phones of this price range by Karbonn, Spice , Lava etc. But Nokia only develop product in windows, symbian and Asha OS based. Nokia introduce swipe feature to access many features in this Asha model e.g. you can close running apps by swiping left/right. Swipe to see apps installed, social networking updates, swipe down to see notifications as like android.

Nokia Asha 501 allows you to change sim cards without removing batteries as it remembers last 5 sims data into memory. Browsing is also fast and it consume less data during browsing. The new Asha software platform also brings a new feature dubbed Fastlane. All the activities performed on the interface are logged in a chronological order with latest activity on the top. It’s not just an arbitrary list but snapshot of the activity such as the half written message or calendar entry.

nokia-asha-501-1

Conclusion –

Nokia Asha 501 is a good phone in this budget range, but if we see the other budget phones we found that Asha 501 is lacking in the many fields either it is in terms of hardware or software related. Many Indian mobile companies Micromax, Karbonn, Spice, and also Samsung like brands having good hardware rich mobiles in this budget range. Also Asha 501 having lack of many popular apps like whats app. No 3G connectivity, small in screen size and low screen resolution make it tough to choose.

Detailed Technical Specification of Asha 501 as per gsmarena.com

General 2G Network GSM 900 / 1800 – RM-899
850 / 1900 – RM-900
GSM 900 / 1800 – SIM 1 & SIM 2 – RM-902
SIM Optional Dual SIM (Micro-SIM, dual stand-by)
Announced 2013, May
Status Available. Released 2013, June
Body Dimensions 99.2 x 58 x 12.1 mm (3.91 x 2.28 x 0.48 in)
Weight 98.2 g (3.46 oz)
Display Type TFT capacitive touchscreen, 256K colors
Size 240 x 320 pixels, 3.0 inches (~133 ppi pixel density)
Multitouch Up to 2 fingers
Sound Alert types Vibration, MP3 ringtones
Loudspeaker Yes
3.5mm jack Yes
Memory Card slot microSD, up to 32 GB, 4 GB card included
Internal 128 MB, 64 MB RAM
Data GPRS Up to 85.6 kbps
EDGE Up to 236.8 kbps
WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g
Bluetooth Yes, v3.0 with EDR
USB Yes, microUSB v2.0
Camera Primary 3.15 MP, 2048×1536 pixels
Video Yes,QVGA@15fps
Secondary No
Features OS Nokia Asha software platform 1.0
Sensors Accelerometer, proximity
Messaging SMS(threaded view), MMS, Email, IM
Browser WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML
Radio FM radio
GPS No
Java Yes, MIDP 2.1
Colors Bright Red, Bright Green, Cyan, Yellow, White and Black
– SNS apps
– MP4/H.263/WMV player
– MP3/WAV/WMA/AAC player
– Photo editor
– Organizer
– Voice memo
– Predictive text input
Battery Li-Ion 1200 mAh battery (BL-4U)
Stand-by Up to 1152 h
Talk time Up to 17 h
Music play Up to 56 h
Li-Ion 1200 mAh battery (BL-4U) for dual-SIM model
Stand-by Up to 624 h
Talk time Up to 17 h
Misc SAR US 1.41 W/kg (head)

Buy Nokia Asha 501 as per Flipkart.com –

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Buy from Infibeam.com-

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