Nokia has unveiled the Nokia Asha 501, the first in a new affordable range of smartphones running on the Asha platform.
Light and colourful, the Nokia Asha 501 offers a 3-inch touchscreen, six colourful body options and a long battery life.
“The new Nokia Asha 501 raises the bar for what is possible in affordable smartphone design and optimisation,” said Timo Toikkanen, Nokia’s Executive Vice President of Mobile Phones. “The synergy between the physical design and the engine that is the new Asha platform has created a smartphone with both style and substance at a great price.”
“Nokia has surpassed expectations of what’s achievable in the sub-$100 phone category with a new Asha handset that is unlike any other, with design cues from Lumia and a mix of features, services and affordability that is valued by price-conscious buyers,” said Neil Mawston, Executive Director of Global Wireless Practice at Strategy Analytics.
Nokia Asha 501 Features
The Nokia Asha 501 features a 3-inch capacitive touchscreen display and weighs just 98g for a light, portable handset perfect for users who are upgrading from a feature phone.
With a 3.2-megapixel camera, the Nokia Asha 501 offers Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity and comes bundled with a 4GB memory card, but supports cards up to 32GB for expandable storage options.
The battery life claims to be very impressive, with talktime up to 17 hours and standby times up to 48 days.
Running the new Nokia Asha platform, the Nokia Asha 501 is inbuilt with two homescreens, called Home and Fastlane. Home is the traditional, icon-based homescreen for individual apps and features launching, but the new Fastlane option presents all recently accessed apps, contacts and other features for a personalised user interface.
Nokia Asha 501 Release Date and Price
The Nokia Asha 501 should be available from June across 90 countries worldwide. The affordable handset will have an RRP of around $99 (£64) SIM free and will launch with six colour options: bright red, bright green, cyan, yellow, white and black.
Our favourite Nokia entry-level handset so far has to be the equally colourful Nokia Lumia 620. Read why in our review.
