Nokia Asha 501: Impressive Low-end Touchscreen Phone for $99 | Hacker News Reader

Nokia Asha 501: Impressive Low-end Touchscreen Phone for $99

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68 pointsRaduTyrsina67 comments

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Hardly impressive - fairly pathetic really. Observe:

http://androidandme.com/2013/04/smartphones-2/archos-reveals...

http://www.androidforcheap.com/cell-phone-android-phone-c-58...

http://www.pandawill.com/mobile-phone-c1/android-os-phone-c5...

etc. Just Google around for tons more.

Generally better in just about every way, and running a real OS that can run real apps.

I think there was a quad core 1080p Chinese phone for $160, too. Considering these are running Symbian, that's a lot less value for buck compared to an Android one, even if the price is "low".

EDIT: This one iOcean X7 - quad core 1.2 Cortex A7, 1080p screen, PowerVR 5XT (1080p video support), 2 GB of RAM, 13 MP camera. Now that's impressive. And it doesn't look too bad either:

http://android-sale.com/iocean-x7-phone.html

of course, there are a lot of them, but what about the quality of them ... ?

I used a pirate Chinese phone for a year. It worked just like any other Android phone and the quality was great considering the price tag of 100€.

would you buy it? :P

These are not running Symbian. From the article:

> Nokia Asha 501 represents the first fruit after Nokia bought Smarterphone, back in November 2012. And maybe thanks to the Smarterphone software, Nokia has managed to pack so much inside a tiny, 3inch touchscreen device.

As for the iOcean, I can't find a review about it anywhere on the web in English. Kind of risky.

Indeed, it is running on a modified version of the S40 platform.

That's correct. That means the "app" runtime on Asha is J2ME plus some Nokia-specific classes. Only pre-installed software can access the S40 OS directly.

That's not competitive with Android, Sailfish, or Firefox OS, all of which are already or will soon be in comparably priced devices in the developing world markets.

Nokia should have kept Meego and/or Meltemi to remain competitive in this segment. They also could have sold Android alongside Windows Phone, as other OEMs do.

+1 to that. And, you won't be paying 100$. This is that type of phone you'll get for free on your carrier with a basic plan

The markets that are targeted by Asha and Chinese shanzhai white labels don't have phone subsidies, mostly. China doesn't, I assume India doesn't either.

You're right. Other than iPhone and some BB, I haven't seen anything coming with subsidies. Also, in India, almost of the connections are pre-paid. As per a Nielsen study, 97% of the youth (age 15 to 24) in India are on a pre-paid connection.

http://trak.in/tags/business/2011/02/24/indian-youth-mobile-...

Indeed, the first one is good, but second one - Starting at: $219.00 + it's a no name. the same about the rest of them. archos' interesting though. but no, asha 501 is not pathetic at all

Sorry, my bad on the 2nd link, I pasted the wrong one. It was meant to be the 'cheap phones' link from that website. Here it is:

http://www.androidforcheap.com/cell-phone-android-phone-c-58...

Those devices are better specs, cheaper (some are under $50), and run a real OS. The third link is the same, with better specs and well under $99, so I'm not sure where you're coming from here. Asha 501 seems very pathetic to me at least.

All of those phones are pieces of junk.

If you are comparing specs, the Asha loses. If you are comparing size, design, build quality, reliability, etc...then there is no competition here.

Think of the difference between a namebrand and a white label.

If you get a bland cheap Chinese android phone, everyone will know it and you'll lose face. An Asha is a bit more classier, well designed, higher quality, still very affordable.

I'm not so sure about that. For example, this phone:

http://www.androidforcheap.com/a7100-tv-wifi-smart-phone-and...

Without a careful inspection, most people will have a very difficult time telling it apart from newer Samsung phones, and it runs far, far better than the terrible Symbian OS.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yx2ueazLvXI

Ryan, there's some truth in your assertions BUT this is not ONLY Symbian. It's MeeGo + Symbian on the core + Smarterphone that Nokia has acquired = new Asha platform software.

Ah, I've seen that phone for real (my office is in Zhongguancun). Its a piece of crap; all the Shanzhai phones are actually. In Chinese they have a saying: 便宜没好货，好货不便宜, you get what you pay for.

What if I wanted to buy something for 7-800 kuai that wasn't a knockoff or a cheap piece of crap? The Asha promises "less" in terms of specs so it can offer more in other areas. Reasonable trade off.

If by "without careful inspection" you mean "looking at the phone when it's turned off". That device is compromised beyond belief. For example it's got 256MB of memory while running Android 4.0. That amount of memory was appropriate for low-res phones running 1.5. Devices with double the RAM became close to unusable with 4.0.

Out of interest, how important is the view "everyone" has about your phone to you? I just don't see why you'd "lose face" over something like that.

To be perfectly honest, I have seen quite a few Chinese no name Android phones and I have never been impressed by any of them. On paper, everything looks great, but the reality differs a lot: stolen design, bad build quality, poor screen resolution/contrast/responsiveness, slow, under-performing battery, etc.

The 401 is not pathetic at all. It includes everything people from emerging country needs: a nice design with robust material, a solid battery life, and an OS good enough for Internet, and social network usage.

RyanZAG also mentions an archos phone. Archos is definetly no a "a chinese no name android phone".

That's the exception in his list, but it does package the same hardware as the Chinese ones.

Regarding the Archos 35 Carbon Spec (the only one under $100), I have never seen a single core processor running Android decently. Most of the time, it actually drains the battery because the processor is struggling to accomplish any task. Not saying Android is a bad OS, just saying that Android requires much more power than S40, and I am sure the Meego-like UX on the Asha is actually nicer than the one proposed by a slow Android phone.

I'm dunno. My brother has a single core android, and it works fine.

Had Nokia kept Meego they would not be in the pickle they are in. Asha sales fell sharply in the previous quarterly report. S40 is not a competitive OS. Meego devices would have multiprocessing and Qt-based apps.

While some customers prioritize industrial design, battery life, and UI responsiveness, the success of Android phones among low-cost Chinese OEMs indicates they think some customers want capabilities before a nice physical package.

Not going to argue about the huge error they made when they dropped Meego. Had (and still have) a Nokia N9 and it was a brilliant phone. With a few iteration, and software updates, it could have been the third mobile OS.

I'm not going to start the OS talk. From my point of view yes, Android is better if you want functionality and stuff like that.

On the other hand, I give my vote for the build quality, the design, color and why not, even for the platform. It may held certain tricks that will prove reliable in daily use.

Unlike the author, I still see this phone as a back-up. But I wouldn't say the same for my smaller sister.

"Another big selling point of the Asha 501 is definitely represented by its battery life, as it has an astonishing 17 hours talk time and up to 48 days of standby"

I challenge you to find something comparable on the sites you've linked in terms of battery life.

Hey, 48 hours standby isn’t all that much…oh wait.

48 DAYS (because I didn't pick up on it at first, even with your comment, it's so unexpected).

Is it really relevant in this day and age ?

I can think of a very few cases (like, being lost in the Borneo jungle) where this would be actually useful in a normal environment.

If you live someplace where you don't have easy access to a power outlet at least once per day, it's unlikely you will have support for the advanced features of a smartphone, and an older Nokia phone will work just as well ...

I find it quite helpful that I don’t have to carry a charger with me for shortish trips, although my phone only lasts about 5 days with medium usage. Granted, if I carry my laptop with me anyway it is just an extra USB cable, but if I don’t, it’s another 200 or so grams I potentially have to carry uphill on a bike.

200gr? Dude, that's the laptop charger.

Hm, okay, this appears to depend strongly on the connector. For the UK, 130g[0] seems to be a common weight, whereas with the Europlug, you can get 18g[1] (I somewhat doubt that this weight is correct, but, well).

Still an annoying item I have to carry with me that provides absolutely no other value.

[0] http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-Micro-USB-Mains-Charger/dp/B...

[1] http://www.amazon.de/mumbi-Universal-mini-Ladegerät-1000mA/d...

I find it absolutely dramatic that people have just accepted that battery life should be terrible with modern smartphone.

It's a trade-off between features. A smartphone does much more than a traditional phone: wireless, 3G, and most of all, high resolution screens make the high consumption a necessary evil in order to deliver the added functionalities.

Personally, I can't really see the added value of having to plug my smartphone less frequently than once per day, as opposed to have all the features offered in exchange.

Power consumption only tells only part of the story : it should be compared to the features offered by the phone, and in which conditions. I doubt we are talking about 48 days of standby with wifi and 3G active, that would be how you normally use a smartphone.

I agree that having more features for a cost in term of battery life is a good trade-off. Still, the battery life argument is a good one when considering buying a new phone.

Between different brands and models, you see a huge difference in term of battery life (think Motorola Android phones VS Apple iPhone 5).

I see as an advantage not having to charge my phone every night, I like knowing that if I forget my charger when travelling, my phone won't be dead after a single day. This is just my personal experience, some people call a lot, some people go on the Internet a lot through 3G (and most phones out there won't last the entire day doing that), or simply the fact of knowing that after a few months of usage, my battery life won't be down to a few hours (yes, battery life goes worse with usage).

Short battery life would be more acceptable if they all charged from usb, but they don't. Festivals, staying out of home for days at a time, holidays - times when you really need a phone, are easier with long battery life. Don't know why people accept it.

Which phones don’t charge via USB, apart from the weird idea Apple has of a standard to require an extra cable?

> Is it really relevant in this day and age ?

Yes. I find it quite inconvenient at times that my phone won't last two full days of normal standby/use cycles. There are times when it simply isn't convenient to charge the thing.

And these phones are aimed more at less affluent parts of the world, where access to power is not nearly as reliable as it is over here in the west - even those in cities with significant electricity distribution infrastructure often experience lengthy blackouts either due to under-production/over-subscription or due to failures within the grid.

> running a real OS that can run real apps.

Don’t underestimate Symbian and the quality of apps available even for niche products. Sure, Android and iOS might get the newest fanciest things in the Valley, but as long as your expectations are not too uncommon, you will find decent apps for nearly every usecase. Add to this that Nokia still has some high-quality apps themselves (Nokia Maps, e.g.) and the fact that Symbian has been around for a long time, and you shouldn’t have too many problems from an app perspective with these phones.

I mean, even the hardly-sold N9 has apps for just about everything (and fifty trillion more things only insane people with too much time on their hands could want).

It's not Symbian, it's S40. So, J2ME apps.

AFAIK there's no freely available SDK for S40 phones, which limits the number of available applications to only what Nokia deem in their interest to make.

Certainly there is a S40 SDK. It's been around for a decade -- the S40 phones have always been programmable with Java ME and many Nokia extensions.

As of this new device, the S40 SDK has been renamed as the "Asha software platform":

"The new Nokia Asha software platform builds on the success of the Series 40 Developer Platform, to deliver consumers globally the power of a smartphone in an affordable, pocketable form factor. A 3” QVGA screen and swipe UI delivers a superior, fun user experience. For developers the Nokia Asha software platform offers new Java APIs and an updated web apps platform for desirable, high value apps."

http://www.developer.nokia.com/Develop/asha/

That's technically correct, but J2ME, even on Asha, is limited in capability and capacity: 2MB jar size and 4MB heap size, and without the rich component lifecycle that enables Android software to fit in small-ish heap limits. There is also no background processing, and no concept of middleware components like bound services.

If you are a close partner of Nokia, you can get an SDK to create code that accesses S40 OS directly, but that's much like coding on a feature-phone's RTOS, and only for creating pre-loaded software.

How is that pathetic?

Looks like a nicely engineered _PHONE_ with dual sim capability and can also check your emails/web sites/etc. To top it off they come with a battery LIFE that puts the whole industry to shame!

I think you are greatly overestimating the power of "android smartphones"; especially the cheap Chinese stuff. The hype is impressive.

Many people just want a _reliable_ phone they don't need to worry about charging every 12 hours. After having used a "smart phone" for 6 months I'm back to my cheap 4 years old Nokia phone: makes calls, receives calls, needs charging once a week (also does radio and flashlight, how cool is that!).

This "used-car salesman" undertone, wordily mulling over the same points, and over the top praise are very typical of most Indian magazines and newspapers even. I'm not trying to be nasty here, even I am Indian and not a native speaker of English. I just find this style of writing very amusing and can recognize it anywhere. :-)

EDIT: I was wrong about 'recognizing it anywhere', this article isn't from an Indian publication. No offense.

huh?

It is, but I don't get your point. Though the writer is from Romania

By "the writer", you mean yourself, right? I think the GP is just pointing out how unusual in style such articles are compared to, say, US tech websites. I very much doubt you'd see a sentence like "There are many things that might steal your heart away at this device" there.

A more cynical man than I might label it a gushing puff piece garnered by some expenses paid Nokia PR event, GP points out cultural differences that might belay such an accusation.

For all the non-impressed people. It was unveiled in New Delhi, meaning it focus group isn't western world. It is not meant for you, who already own a smartphone.

And for its focus group, it is pretty darn impressive. Battery life for people who don't have toilet, not mentioning wall outlets.

edit: I think it would be perfect phone for kids first phone. Simple, cheap, good battery, durable.

On a conceptual level, I like the approach of building up a mini-smartphone from the bare essentials. A few years back Nokia acquired a company called Smarterphone that was doing this[1], and this updated Asha platform is apparently the first fruits of the acquisition.

The alternative is to take the "kitchen-sink" platform of Android which is actively developed for quad-core phones and full-HD displays, and try to pare it down to run on low-end hardware that's an order of magnitude slower and also has an order of magnitude less pixels to work with... While still preserving compatibility with half a million existing apps.

That's of course pretty much impossible, so instead the super-cheap Android devices are running old software from several years ago with extra limitations imposed by the low-end platform.

The difference in the two approaches is analoguous to Windows RT vs. iOS on tablets -- the other party tries to cut down the full system for cheaper devices, while the other builds up from software that's been proven on smaller devices.

[1] According to previous reports, the Smarterphone OS had an app platform written in Scheme! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smarterphone

...I doubt anything of that survives in the Asha platform, but it would be cool to do low-end smartphone apps in Lisp :)

If this is a return to the good old days of being able to throw your nokia down a flight of stairs without even dropping the call, then count me in.

Wait, you can make calls with it?

Interesting to see lots of influence from the N9. The interface seems quite good on this one, there's a little demonstration by Peter Skillman, starting at about 2:00: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6iMsePF0kk

If by "free access to facebook" they mean no data charge for facebook access for the lifetime of the phone, I wouldn't be surprised by this being a hit with the college crowd... especially if the camera is decent.

A lot of carriers provide "free" access no matter what phone you have https://www.facebook.com/blog/blog.php?post=391295167130

The catch is the videos/photos are not free, nor are the links to other websites of course.

ZTE produces tons of Android devices for this amount or slightly less. The ZTE Blade being one example: which has been out three or four years.

This seems less "impressive" and more "impressive marketing." Why are we reading about this? How does it advance anything? A worse phone for slightly more money, because it has "Nokia" on the front?

Did you read the entire article?

A nice, cheap, small phone with dual-sim? Isn't this just like every other Asha phone they make?

Yes, but look at more features, read the article and you'll see

Awesome build quality and impressive design. The screen size could've been bigger though

This is awesome and may well be my next phone! Going to wait for the 3G version, though.

Seems like a better "Facebook phone" than the one on Android.

So, who will write J2ME apps for them?

Can I put Android on it?

why?

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