Nokia announces Asha 210 with World's First Dedicated WhatsApp Button | Hacker News Reader

Nokia announces Asha 210 with World's First Dedicated WhatsApp Button

conversations.nokia.com

43 pointsajhit40644 comments

This looks fantastic. Keep in mind that this phone is designed for the worlds poor-- people who can barely afford enough prepaid airtime to send a text message. Nokia and WhatsApp are bringing technology to an underserved market that have the most to benefit from it. They are achieving what OLPC couldn't.

Now, I only wish this phone had a flashlight.

I've always found a smartphone's screen to be bright enough to serve as a flashlight for most situations :-)

Series 40 was one of the best operating systems built by Nokia. Unlike the Series 60/Symbian series, these Nokia phones are snappy and do not slow down with time.

These feature phones were quite capable for basic phone features, but never evolved to the Facebook era. This effectively led to the mass adoption of touch screen based phone. If Nokia has solved the social app problem with this phone, I think they have a winner.

I think it's great that you can get a cheap phone with good functionality.

What I don't think is great is tying your phone to WhatsApp. It's great that it runs WhatsApp, but what happens when something new and better comes along? All of a sudden your phone doesn't look so hot and the button is a constant reminder that it's physically tied to an old app.

I would be much more interested in a simple cheap phone that provided an accessible button that allowed you to customize what it loaded. That way you could link it to WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, or whatever app you use the most.

Here's what I want in a phone:

  – Ability to place calls
  – Ability to text
  – Whatsapp
  – Google Maps

  – The ability to remove all other applications from the phone, including the browser.

If I can do that, then great. I'm a college student. I have an iPhone 3GS that is slowly dying with a 14 EUR (~18 USD) p/m plan. If I can just buy this thing cheap, then I'll stick to the dataplan I already have.

What OS does this phone use? I couldn't find that information.

Asha phone might work for you. Google maps not included but it has Nokia maps that are quite good - still no option for offline, it downloads map when you need it, as well navigation option is very poor in Asha.

I don't see why not simply buy cheap Android phone (e.g. Prestigio). Experience will be better and price the same. While I'm not sure about charging: I guess cheap Android will need to be charged daily and Asha might last from 3 to 7 days.

It's possible to push maps from a PC to at least some S40 phones:

http://conversations.nokia.com/2012/03/13/using-nokia-maps-f...

I doubt they disabled it for this one.

Maybe that will be useful for others but overall maps experience on asha is not very good.

I would be surprised if Nokia maps didn’t allow offline navigation. It does on my N9 and did on the E63 (Series 60), and I found it generally much more usable than anything Google has come up with.

Not on Asha. I had two for investigation of market.

N9 is great phone :)

> What OS does this phone use? I couldn't find that information.

Series 40

Perhaps other "non-first first-world" (Russia?, Spain?) HN readers can help me, but it seems to me that Nokia has got the pulse of markets like India, Africa, et al very well mapped. I can definitely see phones like these gracing people's pockets soon in places like India. Plus value for money is a big thing, in such markets over features or other riff-raffs. While colour preference is a highly personal thing, those colours are definitely going to be popular in India or Africa...

In India, Nokia is still a juggernaut, but it is struggling to catch up with Android. Cheap android phones are flooding the markets, and they are eating into Nokia's S40's shares. The slightly better Symbian Bella, while still being sold on market, is not under active development anymore, and since no one is buying the Lumia, Nokia is still facing issues.

If Nokia could just build an android phone, that would be the end of my dreams.

Thanks. Interesting angle... nokia juggernaut vs. Android juggernaut.

>> and since no one is buying the Lumia

Oh... I was under the impression they did okay on that count in India sales? I even heard that BB Z10 is doing very brisk business in India as well. Maybe CK Prahlad had a point on this pyramid market idea after all.

It's not so much that Nokia has product formulation right for those markets, it's that they dominate distribution in some markets.

Trouble is, that's hard to defend.

This is a very different angle to the others.

>> they dominate distribution in some markets.

I didn't know that. And others? not so much?

Someone mentioned Samsung. I thought they were also quite dominant in India, yes? And we also hear about the home grown phones (some names.. the names escape me) and the "great chinese cellphones influx". These haven't affected Nokia yet. Is that what you're saying?

Competition in India and other markets for Asha phones is already intense, and Asha sales have dropped sharply, despite a lot of effort in new features and new devices. There is not much good news about Nokia.

>>Nokia has got the pulse of markets like India, Africa

You are right, they have. Mainly because people in these regions do not buy a phone just because everybody else is buying it even though many features either shall not be any use of them or will not be available for lack of infrastructure. Another big reason(maybe biggest) is that they don't have that kind of money.

>>Plus value for money is a big thing

I doubt it's not a big thing everywhere. It is and it's good. It just depends on person to person.

>>those colours are definitely going to be popular in India or Africa

These colours are what? Just colours and shall be good to go anywhere and as you rightly said "is a highly personal thing". Then, could you care to state why they are going to be particularly popular in India or Africa, if not everywhere or anywhere else - considering you bothered to made this point?

>> I doubt it's not a big thing everywhere.

Yes. However, elsewhere (developed markets), value for money vs. extra features vs. keeping up with latest tech. is the variables for trade-off. You yourself said it here: Mainly because people in these regions do not buy a phone just because everybody else is buying it even though many features either shall not be any use of them or will not be available for lack of infrastructure

But, in markets like Africa/India, disposable income to spend over phones is not that high; so the trade-off variables in terms of what is perceived as "value for money" will be very different. So value for money dominates this demographic more powerfully.

>> could you care to state why they are going to be particularly popular in India or Africa

Anecdotal evidence and anecdotal observation of people's tastes and choices and approach, etc., etc.. There you go. :) Hardly rocket science stuff, and hardly something to defend on any forum (especially, this forum) ;) If they are popular elsewhere also, well, Go, Nokia, go :D!

>>and hardly something to defend on any forum (especially, this forum)

It was not about defending, I genuinely was curious because it was a totally absurd observation and now as you have already stated it is(i.e. a personal statement of choice made in a generic way).

>>f they are popular elsewhere also, well, Go, Nokia

Another whatever or you really believe Nokia is not "go go go" because of the colour of phones it makes? Because it made similar diverse colour phones when it was popular as in ruled!

Anyway, choices - it's clear to know that it was your own very very personal opinion without any solid background or study.

I'm glad some manufacturers aren't jumping into the "big screen" and "minimal buttons" trend. Now if we could just remove the "social networking" trend. Understandably, a phone is considered a social device but there's calling someone and then there's tweeting/facebooking (is this the common verb now?). Will we start seeing physical buttons on laptops for facebook or twitter?

Umm... messaging (and that also means messaging via social networks) is the primary function of this device. You don't get a qwerty-phone to call people. So it's just sensible that FB et al are being emphasized on the UI.

Great looking phone, great price.

Looks like a senior citizen phone.

While Asha phones are very well designed, they are fighting a losing battle. In the developing world, your phone is your internet access. Choosing between an Asha and an Android is going to be a hopeless proposition for the Asha. Dozens of Chinese OEMs are making Android phones for India and Africa, some of which cost less than $100. Rockchip, Mediatek and other chip makers are pushing the price down as fast as they can on Android-ready chipsets.

Reminds of HTC Cha Cha, with the Facebook button. That never went anywhere either.

I think this is a bit different though. It's aimed at a very low end of the market, people who are cost conscious tie up nicely with WhatsApp demographic from what I've seen.

It also isn't just about that button, its a minor iterative design on an existing phone which by all accounts sold well, though judging by Nokia's last quarter, it probably has little gross margin.

The thing I find interesting is that in the UK the 'media' doesn't talk about WhatsApp, they fawn over twitter endlessly, facebook and iWhatever too. But I've never seen anything on the BBC news about it, despite the fact most people I know now use it more than SMS/Email.

Myself I just wish WhatsApp had a decent desktop component.

Most of the people I know in the UK use Viber. Likewise most people I know in Japan use Line, Lot's of people in the CHina region use Wechat. It's still a fragmented market and SMS is still the only service that is common. With operators looking to disrupt the market with RCS, it will only fragment it more.

I have had a HTC ChaCha for quite a while.

It would have been a great phone however the memory management is embarrassingly bad [1]. If they had sorted the memory problem and allowed the dedicated FB button to be used for anything e.g take photos or activate a chat app, they would have made a dent in the phone market.

[1] https://www.google.com.ng/search?q=htc+chacha+memory+problem...

So, basically, if they had made a better phone with an extra button.

That is absolutely hideous

Speak for yourself, until I was forced away from it that form factor was by far my preferred type. I loved my old Motorola Q9h.

(Not sure what WhatsApp is though... err, 28 year old male, am I in the demographic for it? I already have unlimited SMS for $5 a month or so, and it is indeed how I primarily use my phone.)

Unlimited SMS is something that's not available in most third world countries.

Also, the functionality of WhatsApp far exceed SMS's.

I tried to install WhatsApp many times on my Android phone. Every single time, I've been put off by its gargantuan list of required permissions.

Function is beauty.

I doubt you will find another sub $75 phone with a QWERTY keyboard and WhatsApp.

The Pink and Yellow colors are a nice touch too. I think low-income buyers are tired of being limited to just black and gray phones.

In my experience, higher income buyers are tired of being limited to black and gray phones as well. That was a big selling point of the Lumia 920 to me. It didn't need a case and it came in the color I wanted.

I guess it'll work just fine for some people. My cousin doesn't browse on her phone but only uses whatsapp and sometimes texts. The front-qwerty takes lots of space, but it doesn't matter if you don't need a lot of screen for webpages and such.

I think the blue version will also look much better than the banana, ehm, yellow phone. A nephew had a yellow Nokia Lumia, everyone's first reaction was really "nice banana" :P

I'm sure it will. Given the price point it's obviously not aimed at the early adopters but still looks terrible imo.

Looks amazing for $72, there's a huge market for this, even in US. I see dirt broke people paying $200/month for iPhones and data plans when this would do them just fine.

On another note: You can love /hate them for Android vs Windows Phone or patent lawsuits, but Nokia is legendary. Their phones never freaking die. Nokia would be my first choice for a phone that just works. (I don't "live on the cloud" and can do just fine by checking FB once or so a day so maybe I'm different)

> Looks amazing for $72, there's a huge market for this, even in US. I see dirt broke people paying $200/month for iPhones and data plans when this would do them just fine.

I feel this statement shows a fundamental misunderstanding of people. iPhones and other premium-yet-achievable consumer devices fulfil more than immediate usage needs. These people may do fine in this Nokia handset, but they won't want to do fine on the Nokia handset. It's cheap, they don't want to be cheap. Things are generally sold by people looking "up" instead of people looking "down".

There is truth to this. For example Ikea, is actually a seller of extremely cheap furniture to poor people. They even make you pick your own products from their warehouse! However the marketing cleverly inverts that so that shopping at Ikea is portrayed as an aspirational goal.

I think Ikea has a quite different image in the US and in parts of Asia, where it's considered a hip, quite desirable brand.

It's not necessarily so that the poor shop in European Ikea. But throughout most of Europe it's not considered specifically hip, or upscale.

That's probably based on it's history. It's not that long ago that Ikea seriously started to work on design. Most of the fare they had like 20 years ago can charitably be described as "rustic".

It also got a lot easier to build the furniture as compared to a couple decades ago, where you always had either spare -, or not enough screws.

Ikea is a funny old goose though, they're aspirational products because the range is staggered. There's very much a cheap end and a high end, the whole pick and pack means they can keep costs low enough to get people in at the low end and upsell them progressively. So a student gets a £20 table, then moves up to a £60 one, and then a matching TV unit. It's clever, they've nailed product categorisation and buyer psychology.

Hey, I buy my furniture at Ikea, are you calling me cheap?

Seriously though, Ikea doesn't thrive because of their marketing, at least not where I live. You barely see Ikea advertisements.

Ikea is known for having a wide range of cheap and moderately reliable furniture. They're known for mostly minimalistic, generally attractive designs clearly aimed at young people setting out on their own (be it for dorms or their first own apartment or house).

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