Nokia Asha 501

The phones comes in a very sleek and compact package and comprises of following items-

While the Asha 501 may not win any design awards, it’s certainly brings a different design to the market filled with similar looking devices (read boring). Available in vibrant colors of Red, Yellow, and 4 more colors, the phone really looks great. However, my device is in Black color only. The device feels great in hands as well and comes across as a solid handset reminiscing the legacy of Nokia’s strong and sturdy phones. It has very handy dimensions of 99.2 x 58 mm, although it’s not very sleek having the thickness of 12.1 mm. It’s also very light-weight at just 98.2 g.

The phone’s right side has all the buttons viz. volume up and down as well as power button. The top houses standard headphone jack, charging port and a microUSB port for data transfer. The left and bottom sides of the device are completely free of any elements.

The display of the phone is 3.0 inches with the QVGA resolution of 240 x 320 pixels. It results in pixel density of 133 ppi and color depth of 256 k colors. The display is brilliant and color reproduction is pretty good. The phone doesn’t have automatic brightness option, but it gives users the ability to adjust the brightness. The display offers nice viewing angles as well. Even under direct sunlight, one can read the text and view the images easily.

The phone has a 1 GHz processor along with 64 MB RAM. It may sound low configuration, but the phone is blazingly fast, there is no lag absolutely whatsoever in the device. In terms of memory, it has 128 MB in-built storage which can be used for storing apps and few files. The storage can be further expanded through the microSD card and the phone already bundles a 4 GB microSD card.

Asha 501 runs on Nokia’s proprietary Asha platform which traces its roots back to the Symbian S40 OS. But, this OS is specifically designed for the modern age with touch centric and intuitive interface. The phone works on simple one interaction only- Swipe. Swipe left and right to see the applications menu or the Fastlane, where Swiping up will take you to the above, while swiping down below. Swiping down will also bring notification pane for toggling dual SIM (to set calling from one of them by default), Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Data, etc. as well as checking unread messages, missed calls. In any app, Swiping up brings additional options like sharing, deleting, and more relevant options. Phone supports two-finger multi-touch which is useful for zooming the images. One thing, I disliked was the inability to pan and zoom the websites in the browser.

This is perhaps the make or break factor for this device. Of course if users will be able to find the apps in the Asha 501, which they are accustomed to see and use in Android, then they’ll surely go for it. Sadly, that is not the case, it doesn’t enjoy the huge app library of Android, but still offers most of the useful apps. For starters, Social networking apps like Facebook, Twitter are already installed and LinkedIn can be installed from App Store. There are several preinstalled games as well, though many of them are demo version only. For messaging, it doesn’t have WhatsApp, but both Nokia and WhatsApp have confirmed that it will be coming soon. Till then, users can use its alternatives like WeChat and Line, which offers same or even better functionality.

Our device was a dual SIM variant and both of them are active at the same time. It also has a microUSB port, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0. Though, it doesn’t comes with microUSB cable, it works flawlessly with any cable and can be used for data transfer or as a modem. Wi-Fi worked well for browsing websites, using apps such as LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. Nokia has implemented a very useful feature with Bluetooth called as Bluetooth Slam, essentially it’s a different implementation of Bluetooth technology only. Whenever, users want to share any file, contact, etc. from Asha 501, they simply need to select Slam to Share option and bring the other device (where the content is to be sent) in its vicinity or even tap the devices together to enable sharing. This is very nifty feature and fun to use as it’s very visual.

Nokia has packed Asha 501 with a 3.2 MP camera at its back. The device doesn’t offer any additional capabilities like flash, autofocus, etc., but does offer basic software features like zoom, white balance, effects, etc. It offers average quality when it comes to images, which are good enough for casual needs. In daylight conditions, the images are just fine, but it turns shoddy in poor lightning.

The phone is capable of playing most of music formats and mp4 format for video. The default music player and video player present in the device offer most of the features. It can play mp3 formats for music and mp4 format for video respectively. Although, the videos can only be watched in 320 x 240 resolution, which means you’ve to convert the video before transferring them to the device.

To say that I’m impressed by Asha 501’s battery life would be an understatement. Unlike today’s smartphones which hardly last a single day of usage, the phone lasted 3 days for me with the basic usage of calling, messaging, internet surfing and listening to music. Even in extreme usage, the phone will certainly be able to provide a battery life of 2 days or more.