Nokia Asha 501

Produced in six bright colors, the small, electric Nokia Asha 501 practically leaps off the shelf. Nokia is hoping to corner the entry-level smartphone market with its unlocked Asha line, which ranges from bare-bones QWERTY phones to the tiny touch-screen 501 model.

The Asha 501 fits the bill of compact and budget-friendly feature phone that does what it sets out to do, although the trade-off between cost and hardware quality shows, especially in the screen and camera departments.

Designed for emerging markets, the $99 Asha 501 will be easier to find in India, Latin America, and the Middle East. It launched June 2013 in parts of Europe, and will branch to the U.K. and other markets later. The Asha line isn't designed to sell in North America, so don't expect it to make its way to American carriers.

Design and build
One of the phone's most prominent features is its neon-bright colored back cover. I tested the electric red-orange model, but it also comes in loud green, yellow, and blue tones, and a more subdued black and white. The phone's polycarbonate matte finish doesn't pick up fingerprints and feels soft and smooth, but not slippery.

The next thing you'll notice about the Asha 501 is that it's tiny. Its squarish, compact design and rounded corners make the the device easy to slip into tight pants pockets or fit in small bag, so you can tote it with you everywhere. Since it's so small and light, you can comfortably sit on it, too.

The Nokia Asha 501 is bright, bright, bright.

(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)

Roughly the size of a deck of cards, this 501's straight sides and a flat back help make it comfortable to hold and grab. It also feels comfortable up at the ear.

Just in case you're wondering, the Asha 501 measures 3.9 inches tall by 2.9 inches wide and is 0.47 inch thick (99mm x 58mm x 12mm) and weighs just 3.4 ounces (98 grams).

A small phone, the 501 comes with an even smaller screen: a tiny 3-inch QVGA 320x240-pixel resolution display with a 133 pixels per inch ppi and support for 262,000 colors. The screen leaves a lot to be desired, and looks dim even at full brightness. Colors are also subdued. In full sunlight, the sun's bright rays and reflection makes the display hard to read.

The Asha 501's screen looks dim and is hard to read in bright sunlight.

(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)

Unfortunately, the 501's screen is also unresponsive at times, especially when I was trying to slide the lock screen icon to unlock the phone. Sometimes I had to try a couple of times to make that work. Even though it's a budget phone, I was still hoping for a brighter screen and more touch sensitivity.

Although I have petite fingers, I also had some trouble typing on the virtual keyboard without making a lot of mistakes and tapping small targets, like a link on a website.

The rest of the controls are predictably straightforward. There's a slim volume rocker and petite power/lock button on the right spine. Both are slightly raised from the surface and easy to press, but because the lock and volume-down buttons are so close together, it's easy to push the wrong one when you're in the middle of a call.

On the top edge, you'll find a headphone jack, and both a Micro-USB port and a proprietary charging port. Nokia says it included the two charging ports to give customers more options to power the phone, but it's strange that Nokia didn't just pick one port, the standard one. You can, of course, also use the USB port to transfer files from your phone to a computer.

The Asha 501 can slip easily into pockets.

(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)

Below the screen is a single button that's easy to find and press when you're not looking at the phone. Press it once, and it will go back one step or page in an app. Hold it down, and it will exit the current app. It's easy to tap the button to go back one step, though you have to hold it down for several seconds to close an app, which I didn't like.

Behind the colorful back cover are the battery, SIM card slot, and SD card slot hidden on the side amidst the black material. The 501 comes with 128MB of internal memory, plus a 4GB microSD card to get you started (but the phone will take up to 32GB in external storage).

You must remove the 501's back cover to get to the microSD card.

(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)

Removing the back cover can be a struggle, since it wraps all the way around the sides of the device and there are no notches to pry the phone body and cover apart. It helps to hold the left and right sides of the phone while you separate the two pieces of the phone.

The 501's only speaker is also tucked behind the back cover. Audio sounds clear and loud enough at the highest volumes to hear, even outside.

OS and features
The 501 runs Nokia's Asha 1.0 operating system, which looks different than Nokia's older Symbian OS, though you'll recognize the rounded app icons.

To unlock the phone, press the side lock button and swipe left or right on the lock screen, where you'll see the time and date, plus notifications from text messages and missed calls, among others. You can swipe them away from the lock screen, or tap them to go straight to the corresponding app.

The lock screen shows the time and notifications.

(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)

The Asha 501 has only two home screens; one with all of your apps and another named Fastlane, which shows reminders, notifications, and an activity log of recently opened apps and other phone activity.

In this Fastlane home screen, you can quickly open recent apps or respond to notifications. Calendar events stay pinned to the top of Fastlane, but you can dismiss everything else at once by tapping and holding anywhere on the screen.

If you swipe from the edge of the phone body (not just the display) toward the screen in either direction, the phone will go back to the home screen from any app. I occasionally accidentally swiped back to the home screen instead of swiping around in an app, which was annoying.

Similar to Android, you can swipe down from the top of the screen anywhere in the phone to show a notifications bar and controls to toggle Wi-Fi, data, sound, and Bluetooth.

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Hands-on review: Updated: Nokia Lumia 925

The Nokia Lumia 925 is an odd device – on the one hand, a bold design, on the other, debatable specs for a flagship phone.

Known as the "Catwalk" phone for a long time, this is the phone that some fans have been clamouring for: a Nokia Lumia that brings an aluminium design with the same innovative features.

However, it's not all good news for the metal fans, as it's still got a polycarbonate back as Nokia hasn't worked out how to rock an all-aluminium chassis in the same way HTC managed with the One.

That's not to say the design of this 4G-enabled phone isn't impressive, as with the rounded aluminium edges you'd be hard pressed to notice that the back was made of plastic, albeit a premium version of that material – plus it will come in black, white and silver.

(By the way, well done Nokia for not giving the colours "magical" names. If it's white, call it that).

The front of the phone will also still wow a few, as it's using the same ClearBlack technology, coupled with an HD OLED screen, on a 4.5-inch display.

Underneath the hood there's a dual-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset powering things along, as well as 1GB of RAM and an 8.7MP camera bolted on the back.

Some eagle-eyed readers will notice something about those specs: they're identical to the Nokia Lumia 920, launched in September 2012. In the ensuing period HTC and Samsung have both launched 2GB, quad-core powered devices with much larger HD screens.

We can't claim that they're miles ahead in smartphone terms though; while the specs don't compare at all, Nokia's well-integrated use of Windows Phone 8 means its phones generally rocket along in day to day use, and battery power is conserved as a result.

That said, there's no denying that the screen quality is a step down when viewed side by side with the likes of the One or Galaxy S4. It's not a bad screen at all, as it's bright and clear with decent colour reproduction, but the sharpness difference is noticeable when doing things like internet browsing.

Let's talk about what the Nokia Lumia 925 is really about though: an upgraded camera with all new functionality. If you use Nokia's Smart Camera technology as the default setting it allows you to take 10 photos at once and then allows you to do a number of cool things with said snaps.

Nokia calls this an 'evolution' of the camera technology on its phones, and it's true as you no longer have to faff about with separate 'lenses' to enable functionality.

It's a similar system as the one used by HTC in the One, where capturing a 3.6 second Zoe when taking your picture allows you to create action shots, change faces in case someone blinks, remove background objects and more.

In our quick test the Lumia 925, with its 10 photos to choose from, performed a little better at things like working out which object to remove, and was a lot better than the same functionality in the Galaxy S4, on top of being easier to manipulate images you take.

There is a caveat to all this awesome technology: the 925 is a little slow on processing. And when we say a little, we're being kind. If you're taking photos for your own pleasure and have time to mess about with them to get the perfect result, then the annoying time watching the little dots at the top of the screen (which pop up when the phone is working through a task) isn't an issue.

But Nokia's selling this phone as having great shots you can share with friends -and nobody wants to be the person saying they can take a really cool picture then waiting 15 seconds to even start editing.

The other bold claim made by Nokia is the "best lowlight images without using a flash" - again, taking on HTC with the One's Ultrapixel power. We couldn't test the two side-by-side, but there's no doubt that this is going to be a closely fought war, with Nokia stating it will be putting marketing budget behind proving its own Lumia camera sensor can eclipse the One.

It reckons it can do this on a sensor that's already been used on the 920 by adding in a sixth lens to the camera unit, helping to improve things like optical image stabilisation and general photo quality.

However it's one of the only things that's different between the two phones beyond the design, with everything else nearly identical or actually worse on the Nokia Lumia 925.

They both pack a 2,000mAh battery, a 4.5-inch screen (although the addition of OLED technology over LCD is a welcome one) the same processor and RAM. However, the Lumia 925 has half the internal memory, down to only 16GB - with no expansion in sight, this is going to be a real problem for a lot of users.

Wireless charging is also not included with this phone, something Nokia tells us is a bid to keep the weight of its new flagship phone right down. You can add that functionality back in through a protective case, but it still smacks of Nokia confusing its strategy given it's poured so much effort into talking up the technology.

The diet that the Finnish brand has subjected its newest handset to is impressive though, as it's now down to 139g over the 185g whopping weight of the predecessor.

It still feels weighty compared the 130g of the plastic Samsung Galaxy S4 (despite the closeness in weight), but we like heft and metal together, so we don't think this is necessarily a bad thing - plus the battery doesn't rattle around in the case any more, which we see as a win.

We haven't touched on the combination of Nokia and Windows Phone 8 yet - and with that you get a high level of extras out of the box. Mix Radio, HERE and clever features like Cinemagraph are all add value, and are key differentiators for Nokia.

The Nokia Lumia 925 is a tricky beast to rate. Nokia tells us that this is a phone designed for the more technologically minded, the person that wants the latest and greatest handset from the brand.

However it seems that person would be disappointed by the Lumia 925, with its average specs and minimal upgrade from the 920 - at least when it comes to the internals.

But there's no doubting that it's going to be a market-leading cameraphone, and with things like the dedicated camera button (sounds obvious, but makes a huge difference) the 925 is definitely going to be a front runner for anyone that wants one of the most powerful portable cameras around.

Given a lot of the functionality will be coming to the older phones though it's hard to guess whether the design update will be enough - but when you hold it in your hand and come to enjoy the combination of polycarbonate and plastic, we reckon it will be enough to sway a number of users.

Price is going to play a massive part here, and that could be where the Nokia Lumia 925 loses out to the competition. It will likely cost the same as the leading smartphones on and off contract, and if someone holds the HTC One and Nokia Lumia 925 together, they're going to be hard-pressed to pick the latter unless they're enamoured by Windows Phone's Live Tiles.

We're obviously going to reserve judgement here until we get the Nokia Lumia 925 in for review - word is this will be around the start of June, so it's not too long to wait now.

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Nokia Mobile Unlocking Instructions And Guides:

Warning: Do not enter any wrong unlock unlock codes on your Nokia C3 mobile phones. If you enter over a certain amount of wrong unlock codes on your mobile phone, your phone may get hard locked and sometimes become unusable.

1 - Switch ON your Nokia C3 with a NOT ACCEPTED SIM Card.

Mobiles launched in April 2013

Nokia Lumia 720

 

Nokia Lumia 720 sports a 4.3-inch display and is powered by a Snapdragon S4 dual-core 1GHz processor alongside 512MB of RAM.It comes with a 6.7-megapixel rear camera and 1.3-megapixel front camera.