First in the new lineup of Asha smartphones, the 501 is now available for pre-order online. The phone will be available to users in the first week of July.
Announced in May, the Nokia Asha 501 is the Finnish mobile manufacturers re-imagination of the budget phone. The device is up for pre-order on the Nokia online shop along with other online retailers such as Flipkart, infibeam, and saholic. The 501 is priced at Rs. 5,199.
The Nokia Asha 501 is 12.1mm in thickness and weighs 98.2 grams. It has a 3-inch LCD display with a 320x240 pixel resolution giving it a 133 ppi. The phone doesn’t have a physical keypad and is a complete touchscreen device. It also boasts of dual-SIM capabilities. The 501 supports GPRS up to 85.6kbps, EDGE up to 236.8kbps, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0 and a microUSB port for data transfer. The rear of the device has a 3.2MP camera and it compromises on a front facing camera. It has 128MB built-in storage expandable up to 32GB via a microSD card and supports 64MB of RAM. A 1200mAh battery powers the 501 and the company claims that it will last for 56 hours of music playback; 17 hours of 2G talk time and a whopping 48 days 2G standby time.
The 501 runs on the Nokia Asha software platform 1.0. The new Asha OS has a Fastlane feature, which users can access with a swipe, displaying all recently accessed aspects of the phone, from apps to contacts to messages, allowing users to quickly jump between their most commonly used features. The Asha 501 is the platform lead device for the ‘Nokia Asha software platform 1.0’, based on Smarterphone’s OS, a company Nokia acquired back in 2011. Unfortunately, this does mean Nokia will have another nascent ecosystem on its hands again, and will be releasing SDK/APIs for developers soon. Java-compatibility will ensure S40 apps from the Nokia Store can be easily ported over. The phone will launch with $75 worth of EA games, and some major apps, like Facebook and Twitter will be pre-installed.
Nokia listed some of the applications that are already available or in development for the Nokia Asha platform, including CNN, eBuddy, ESPN, Facebook, Foursquare, Line, LinkedIn, Nimbuzz, Pictelligent, The Weather Channel, Twitter, WeChat, World of Red Bull and games from Electronic Arts, Gameloft, Indiagames, Namco-Bandai and Reliance Games. A couple of months from launch, the Nokia Here app, WhatsApp and Line will make their way to the platform.
Nokia will also be selling accessories for the Asha 501, such as a universal portable USB charger, the Nokia WH-208 stereo headset, and a shell. We got some hands on time with the Asha 501 when it was unveiled in India.
The Nokia Asha series of smartphones were good as feature phones and were a better option than most entry-level android smartphones last year. But budget Android smartphones in the past few months have transformed from devices that deliver a frustrating experience to devices that have the ability to give a decent entry level Android experience where most of the apps and games available on the play store function smoothly.
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