Nokia Asha 501 – Cheap and Cheerful full touch screen phone for the masses

Nokia Asha range hasn’t been much attention but the new Asha 501 is set to make heads turn. Made with a seamless and strikingly colourful brick design, the new Nokia Asha 501 is a refreshing take on the lower mobile segment.

On-board it runs on a new Asha platform that’s still based on SmarterPhone which combines the experience of Symbian, MeeGo and Lumia. In the UI front, they have something called fastlane whereby your activities are being lined up in a chronological manner including past, present and upcoming future events. Another enhancement is its built-in browser which has the budget data users in mind. The touch based browser supports server side compression which helps to cut down 90% of data usage when browsing the web.

At the front, it has a 3.0″ TFT display that does 320×240 pixels resolution and it supports multi-touch using 2 fingers. There’s a 3.2MP camera, WiFi and 4GB of on-board storage which can be expanded using microSD.

Juicing up the Asha 501 is a 1,200mAh battery which Nokia claims to have a standby time of 48 days. On the downside, the Asha 501 lacks 3G support which is rather surprising for a 2013 phone. As people associate Nokia of old as being tough and durable, it is good to know that the Asha 501 comes with a hardened glass display and a tough looking monobody back cover. Pricing is definitely a factor in this segment and the Asha 501 carries a price tag of just US$99. That’s about RM300 excluding prevailing tax and additional cost.

For more information, head over to Nokia’s Asha 501 page.

Head after the break for hands-on video and product shots.