Nokia Asha 300 Review

The recently released Nokia Asha lineup is a good deal of lower end devices that run Series 40 and blot out the thin line between feature phone and smartphone and today we are covering Nokia Asha 300 that delivers all the compatible properties. Nokia Asha 300 is powered by 1GHz processor that lets you enjoy different programs of it in the twinkling of your eyes. Although the Nokia Asha 300 may not accurately go well with today's standards of newsworthy, however the price factor is there that makes this handset reachable to middle class with Nokia's promise of quality and one year warranty.

The Touch and Type S40 interface of the Nokia Asha 300 is promptly the same yet it is quite different from the customary non-smart user interface from Nokia. Furthermore, Nokia has barrowed certain elements from smartphones in order to extend the functionality while keeping the simplistic feel of the S40 intact. In addition, Asha 300 is also combined with an app store, a customizable home screen, a faster processor and 128MB of RAM.

The Nokia Asha 300 is a mobile phone that is contemporary yet it aspires to attract mostly to an audience where being simple and reasonably priced is more important than being fashionable.

The retail package of the Nokia Asha 300 is a basic package that only holds the essentials. Below are the accessories that you will get with the handset:

• One Nokia Asha 300 Handset
• An AC Adapter
• A Single-Piece Headset
• A Manual

Look wise, the Nokia Asha 300 does not offer a great deal indeed it is a rather basic blower with a touch screen that is sat above an alphanumeric keypad. On the whole, it looks convincingly stylish. The keypad is pleasurably spaced out, consequently you do not have too much problem thumping out texts, and you can type your messages really quickly in no time.

Advantages

• At 112.8 x 49.5 x 12.7 mm, the Asha 300 is considerably lighter and more compact as compared to the QWERTY-enabled Asha 303. If truth be told, at 85g, the Asha 300 weighs significantly less as compared to the steel-clad Nokia C3-01.
• The keypad is pleasurably spaced out, consequently you do not have too much problem thumping out texts, and you can type your messages really quickly in no time.
• At 12.7mm thick, the Nokia Asha 300 is not the slimmest phone you may have ever come across, however you would barely call it bulky. This smaller and lighter phone will slide into your jeans pocket or handbag with no grumble.
• The oversized screen of the Asha 300 (2.4") as compared to its keypad, makes interacting with the touch interface realistically easy.
• The 2.4' QVGA display although is not impressive however it is more than enough to meet the requirements of the Touch and Type interface.

Disadvantages

• Resistive touch screen of the Asha 300 is the serious complaint here as resistive touch screens are not as smooth as capacitive touch screens. This entails that navigating the Asha 300's interface will feel a lot less smooth than a touch screen on a more luxurious smart phone.
• Screen reflectiveness of the handset is one more major disadvantage that makes viewing the screen hard outdoors regardless of the above-average brightness.

The Nokia Asha 300 runs on the touch-enabled iteration of the Series 40 software. There are barely a few differences between the Asha 300 and the Asha 303 S40 user interface but nothing truly major, for example the new slide-to-unlock lock screen. The 1 GHz processor is something that is a bit more advanced and thus makes Nokia Asha 300 move like a fighter jet. From the functionality point of view, the Asha 300 comes as a tempting offer for those who already are familiar with the Nokia's Series 40 operating system. The Asha 300 moves Nokia budget phones to 1 GHz processor era along with many other features that initially may not sound all that impressive but the pricing of these phones is quite impressive indeed.

Advantages

• The touch-enabled version of the S40 platform makes for simply skin-deep changes, such as the refresh icons a la Symbian-Anna, as well as a few usability improvements, for example the home screen swipes.
• Active standby mode or you can say Home screen mode, is also available which is divided into four sections, each of which is efficiently a widget. Furthermore, the top row of the screen is reserved for status indicators (time, signal, etc.).
• A left and right swipe gesture is available on the home screen that can be set to launch an app both native as well as Java. You can even choose to change the phone profile. Default settings for the swipe gestures are left swipe opens the app collection while Java apps and games folder can be opened via right swipe.
• The soft keys are user-configurable that means you can assign your shortcut of choice to each of them.
• You can store about 2000 contacts depending on the fields you use and can also set the phonebook to display contacts from the phone memory, SIM memory or both.
• The reception on the Nokia Asha 300 is constantly good and in-call sound is also crisp and clear.
• Thanks to its sufficiently and pleasantly spaced keypad, messaging on the Asha 300 is like a breeze even without the QWERTY keypad. The handset can handle all the common message types including SMS, MMS, as well as flash and audio messages and there's easy email setup, as well.
• Nokia has added up four fresh virtual controls to make amends for the missing D-pad and they are two arrow keys, letter case switch and symbols. You can certainly tap to move the cursor wherever you want however you will still require these two arrows for exact positioning.
• Furthermore, the Chat app of the Asha 300 supports Facebook, Google Talk, Ovi Chat, Windows Live Messenger, MySpce IM as well as Yahoo! Chat. In addition, the tabbed user interface of the Operating System is pleasingly thumb-friendly.

Disadvantages

• The biggest omission as usual is multitasking here.
• There's no D-pad on the Nokia Asha 300 however the soft keys are there.
• Smart dialing is not available which is however not surprising for an S40 device and there is no voice dialing either.
• An accelerometer is also missing in the handset. Apart from that the Nokia Asha 300 unlike its other S40 non-touch siblings leaves out features such as tap-for-time and turn-to-mute.

An exceptionally pleasurable surprise is a 5-megapixel camera of the Asha 300 that resides around the back of the handset. The camera can produce photos with maximum resolution of 2592 x 1944. For the connectivity purpose, the Nokia Asha 300 offers quad-band GSM as well as UMTS support. In addition, there is also HSPA support with download speed potentially reaching 10.2 Mbps, and up speed as good as 2 Mbps. But sorry to say, the Asha 300 is not a Wi-Fi-enabled phone.

Advantages

• The Nokia Asha 300 comes with a 5MP fixed-focus snapper that can produce photos with maximum resolution of 2592 x 1944.
• The camera interface is modified consequently it is now a lot more similar to Symbian.
• The image quality is acceptable for a fixed-focus 5MP unit. Photos are moderately noisy however the post processing manages to cover a lot of it.
• The Nokia Asha 300 does VGA at 15 fps which certainly is not the best thing a 1GHz phone can do. Nevertheless, the video quality is decent, with good colors and sufficient detail that is good for MMS.
• The connectivity feature of the Nokia Asha 300 is enhanced with two USB on-the-go devices.
• The Nokia Asha 300 also comes inclusive with a memory card slot. In addition to a card reader it can generally provide you the fastest data transfer rates.
• Bluetooth is version 2.1 and A2DP is, of course, enabled.

Disadvantages

• The Nokia Asha 300 is not a Wi-Fi enabled phone as opposed to the Nokia Asha 303.
• Only one fixed focus camera is there in Asha 300 and furthermore, there is no video call camera as well.
• Unfortunately, a standard USB-OTG-enabled cable, similar to one that you can find with the Nokia N8, is not included in the Asha 300 box.
• The Nokia Asha 300 offers only 140MB of internal storage. However, you can extend it up to 32GB by means of a microSD card, although exasperatingly Nokia doesn't seem to be putting one in the box.

The audio quality of the Nokia Asha 300 is quite good it has a music player that does its job pretty well. Although it does not have any particular changes other than the touch support but it looks quite decent and possesses solid set of features.

Advantages

• The music player is simple but does its job pretty well. The interface does not appear to have loads of changes other than the touch support but overall it looks great.
• Songs can be filtered by artist, album and genre. The player handles AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, MP3, WMA, AMR-NB. As you would expect, the A2DP profile is supported, allowing the use of stereo Bluetooth earphones.
• The FM radio interface of the Asha 300 matches the music player interface and covers all basic functions.
• RDS is supported in the Asha 300 and RDS info and frequency appear on the home screen. You can easily search and save all the available stations in your area.
• Overall, the audio quality is better than you would expect. The frequency response is faultless, there's no distortion and the signal-to-noise ratio is great. Plus, the Asha 300 is nicely loud, so it's almost as good as it gets here.

Disadvantages

• The music player turns off when you hit the red receiver key and takes you to the home screen. However, you can run the player in the background but for that you have to go to Options > Play in background.

The Nokia Asha series is supposed to serve emerging markets where changes are no less impressive. All the four models in the Asha series are noticeably aware of the main concerns of their target audience. Touch screen is leisurely sneaking up the agenda however nothing still beats the fundamentals. With the limited budgets Asha series comes with basic things such as messaging and dual SIM almost compulsory while everything else is not obligatory. And despite the fact that the developing markets may be grown by now for the non-compulsory stuff, the Asha series don't force a hard choice on potential customers.

The Nokia Asha 300 is not innovatory, however if you are in the marketplace for an inexpensive and simple phone, in that case it could be one of the best options to choose. The addition of a 5-megapixel camera is a definite plus, on the other hand, its resistive touch screen entails that it could prove awkward to use.