Nokia Asha 200

Overview

The QWERTY with dual SIM capabilities

Overview of Nokia Asha 200

Creating stylish, sleek and affordable smartphones- that’s what Nokia is known for. The Asha series is another attempt by the Finnish multinational giant to deliver smartphone-like-features at an affordable price-tag. Coming from the vibrant Asha series, Asha 200 is another stylish Dual-SIM smartphone which comes with a 2 megapixel camera, Bluetooth connectivity, and QWERTY keypad. There is in fact a lot more to Asha 200 than just that. Find out:

Build Quality

Nokia Asha 200 is a QWERTY smartphone, which is sleek and light-weight. It measures 115.4 x 61.1 x 14.0 mm and weighs less than 105 g, making it an easy-fit for jeans-pockets. The curves of Asha 200 are carved meticulously, so that they fit into your hands perfectly.

Nokia Asha 200 Display

Nokia Asha 200 flaunts a 2.4- inch QVGA TFT display screen (LCD), which provides absolute clarity to view applications. The images displayed are vibrant and the text displayed while browsing- crisper and readable. The screen may be prone to some occasional scratches. Hence, having a quality screen-guard for protection always helps.

Dual-SIM Functionality

Nokia Asha 200’s Dual-SIM functionality (GSM+GSM) is ideal for business-class people, who are too caught up between their personal and professional life, and want to keep them as separate as possible. Asha 200 also comes with a feature called- Hot Swap, which allows you to swap connections smoothly. Hence, you can choose which connection would be used to send messages or initiate calls. Also, as the second-SIM card slot is provided on the side, you can insert/remove SIM card without switching off the phone. The phone automatically detects the insertion of SIM card (if any) and authenticates the connection. This saves you from the hassle of removing battery and casing, all the time.

Hardware

When you buy a budget smartphone, you should always overlook the hardware specifications, primarily because the OS would be extremely light-weight and there would be no need for any extra computational power.

Keypad

The QWERTY keypad on Nokia Asha 200 is ideal for people who love chatting and texting, all the time. The well-spaced keypad is optimized for effortless typing and provides you the required comfort when you are chatting or texting for prolonged durations.

Nokia Asha 200 Interface

Nokia Asha 200 runs the Series 40 Asha operating System. It comes pre-loaded with Nokia Messaging 2.0 and Nokia Chat. Nokia supports email services like Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, Windows Live, Gmail and Ovi Mail. The phone also allows you to have multiple simultaneous email accounts. The phone also supports various instant messaging services like Google Talk, Yahoo!, Facebook Chat, MySpace, Windows Live Messenger and Nokia chat. Besides, popular social-networking sites- Facebook and Twitter also have their apps ported to Nokia Asha 40. These services help you to stay connected with your social and business circle, while you are on-the-go. Besides, the Series 40 OS supports Java as well as Flash based applications. The phone comes with the OTA update feature, which allows you to update your from anywhere.

Nokia Asha 200 Camera

Asha 200 comes with a 2 megapixel camera, which allows you to capture photos at an impressive 1600 x 1200 pixel resolution. It supports 4x digital zoom and comes with enhanced features like- Sequence mode, active toolbar, Still image editor, Full screen viewfinder and self-timer. The various supported colour tone modes like- Sepia, Greyscale, Normal and Negative. Nokia Asha 200 also supports video recording at 15 fps on 176 x 144 resolution. As per the environmental conditions, you can adjust the video white balance modes- Fluorescent, Incandescent, and Automatic.

Multimedia

Nokia Asha 200 is your complete entertainment solution. It supports all popular audio and video formats. The major audio-formats supported by Asha 200 are MP3, WAV, MP4, AMR, AAC, and WMA. The popular video formats which are supported by Asha player are 3GP, MP4, H.263, and H.264. Nokia Asha 200 also comes with a built-in radio function, which allows you to listen and record music from your favourite radio channels.

Connectivity

Nokia Asha 200 operates on GSM 900- GSM 1800 bands. It comes powered by GPRS (2G) and EGPRS (2G) technology, which fetch upload speeds in the range of 12-85.6 KBit/s and download speeds between 12 - 236.8KBit/s. Though these speeds are slower than 3G, they are subtle enough to ensure seamless connectivity. You can receive/send emails and stay connected with various messaging applications even while you are on 2G network.

Nokia Asha 200 Battery

Asha 200 comes powered by powerful 1430 mAh Li-ion battery. The phone promises a standby of 890 hours (almost 37 days) and Talk time of 7 hours. The phone undoubtedly provides the best battery back-up, when you compare other smartphones with similar functionalities at a similar price-tag. If you commute lot, receive ample calls every-day or hate charging your phone every 12 hours, Asha 200 can be an ideal replacement for you.

Verdict

People have experienced several problems with the phone, some of which include echo of voice over the cellular network. However, the above mentioned problem was looked upon by Nokia as soon as it was brought to notice, and most handsets hopefully should be void of any such glitches. The other potential drawbacks of the phone include no multi-tasking, no video-streaming and mediocre camera quality. However, the price of the phone underemphasizes the features that come ported with Nokia Asha 200. Though there are some drawbacks, they can be over-looked by citing everything Nokia Asha 200 has to offer. The phone can be an ideal buy for house-wives, commuters, and people who want the benefits of a smartphone coupled with an extra-ordinary battery-life. Buy Nokia Asha 200 if you always thought that smartphones cannot have Dual-SIMs, a really long battery life and an astonishingly low price-tag.