Nokia’s newly announced trio of feature phones — Asha 202, Asha 203 and Asha 302 — is catered toward those consumers who really don’t or can’t afford a smartphone. We’re talking about affordable devices that will sell unlocked or with PAYG plans across all continents, except maybe North America where the Finnish company still struggles to establish a decent distribution and partner network.
Although Nokia devices are well known for their build quality, we can’t say the new Asha phones meet that standard. Simply put they feel cheap(er), though I guess something’s gotta give. After all, these phones “belong” to the lower end of the market. The Asha 302 is slightly better thanks to its metal battery cover.
The Asha 202 and 203 are standard candybars with a 2.4-inch touchscreen that allows you to easily select various options within apps. The difference between the two is that the Asha 202 comes with dual SIM capability, enabling the use of two networks at once.
The Asha 302, on the other hand, finds its market among heavy texters on a budget, those looking to get a 3.5G QWERTY phone without breaking a bank. In that sense, we’ve no reason to believe Nokia won’t be able to move millions of these — quite the contrary, we see the Asha 302 selling like hot cupcakes across emerging markets of the world. It’s also super responsive, getting its power from a single-core 1Ghz processor.
All three phones come with a camera and speaker on the back: the Asha 202/203 sports a 2-megapixel camera, while the Asha 302 has a 3.2-megapixel one. Additionally, the latter product also has a D-Pad placed above what feels like a pretty solid keyboard…
I’ll stop here and let you see for yourself what kind of phones these are.
