Nokia Asha 202 Review

Since the launch of Nokia Asha series in October 2011, it stays significantly popular among teenage user and mid-age users for its great features and cheap price. Nokia promise of durability and simplified design can be found in all the Nokia Asha series handsets. These handsets are very competitive to other phones available of similar price range but Nokia for sure beat most of them by its simplicity and best user friendly UI. Nokia Asha Series is so far the only low price smart phone which offer touch and type capabilities with simple UI and lasting quality.

Nokia Asha 202 is the latest addition in Asha Series. It offers great classic 'bar' phone design with decent glossy finish, which makes it an eye catching smart phone. One of the greatest features its offers is the Dual SIM capability with easy swipe option. Users don't need to turn off the handset to change the SIM card. Nokia Asha 202 also offers nice responsive touch screen with great screen visibility. Though screen size is 2.4 inch but it seems justified with the display. Menus look nice and bright and no such difficulty found while operating this device. Beside the display Nokia Asha offers a nice 2MP camera with fine picture quality and also captures video @ 15 frames per second. Don't expect picture and video quality to be best as this is just a basic camera and don't forget it's a low price smart phone.

Nokia Asha 202 build is all plastic with a classic bar phone. It's one of the most wanted designs by Nokia which is still famous by its simple and decent looks. We were expecting it to be a usual looking low end handset but Nokia Asha 202 comes out to be more than expected. Its glossy finish and silver metal side bindings make it attractive and very stylish. Even with all plastic body it felt good and solid in hand.

Nokia Asha 202 has an alpha numeric keypad with decent spacious key. It allows you text fast and no pressure felt on finger while multi tapping the keys. For our QWERTY keypad lovers this is a bit challenging if you're not use to a bar phone or with multi tapping key pad still QWERTY is faster than this key pad. Beside Alpha number key pad Nokia Asha 202 has basic call answer and rejecting button only. Right side of Nokia Asha 202 has the volume rocker and the lock key on the left side it has the second SIM card slot. Top side has the 3.5mm audio jack, micro USB port and charging jack, on low side it has the primary microphone. Back side hold the 2MP camera with loud speaker grill which seems pretty swift.

Nokia Asha 202 is available in Dark Red, Black, Silver White, Dark Grey, and Golden White. As always Nokia still offers the wide range of colors to choose what best for its customers.

Nokia Asha 202 can be said to an entry level smart phone. It runs fine for its limited features but we do understand the limitation as it is design for the budget oriented market segment. Overall menus and applications run on acceptable speed but as compare to other smart phones it is slow. Captive touch display is responsive but the delay in response is noticeable. But for the low end handset Nokia Asha 202 can be said well enough. While using it for internet browsing or pre-installed social application we find it nice as it works fairly at good speed. For its speed dialing and simple phone functions daily calling and texting operation Nokia Asha 202 felt very fast and smooth.

The most significant feature of Nokia Asha 202 is the dual SIM capability which allows users to use two SIM at once. Basic SIM lies under the battery as the typical handsets and the other SIM can be inserted on the left side of Nokia Asha 202. It allows user to use either of their SIM cards without turning off the device. Nokia Asha 202 also has a SIM manager which gives indications and alerts for texting, phonebook etc for each SIM card. This great option makes easy management and saves different operator setting. Users can easily save up to 5 SIM settings in Nokia Asha 202.

Nokia Asha 202 offers a decent 2.4 inch captive touch display screen. The colors and contras seem nice and sharp enough to use the handset in normal light as well as in direct sunlight. Screen stays visible and very pleasing while we test it for hours. Captive touch functionality is slightly slower but it felt nice as this is not a high end smart phone. Viewing pictures, videos or playing games etc felt very decent while its rich color seems to have no issues. Browsing the internet felt good as web pages are clearly visible and text is fairly visible. Here we miss a 3.4 inch screen size, which definitely give better visibility to Nokia Asha 202.

Nokia Asha 202 comes with a 2MP camera which offers fair acceptable image quality. It has 1600x1200 pixels resolution which also offers digital zoom and few basic pictures effects. We can understand the limitation of Nokia Asha 202 due to its cheap price. Video quality is fair we can't say its good cause of the basic 2 MP camera it's the generosity of Nokia to include a camera in such a low price handset.

Nokia Asha 202 offers the old Nokia 40 OS which is perfect for basic phone operations. Home screen has the same short cuts as the other Nokia smart phone and are very handy to get to the required app which user want to access. The UI is fair enough to work smooth with the touch screen functions, response is good while swiping from right to left or up and down. Nokia can offer a bit upgraded OS with Asha 202 but we think the competition and price limitation seems to be the issue.

Nokia Asha 202 is great for internet connectivity with its GPRS and EDGE capabilities. Social application and browsing felt pretty swift while we use it for few hours. Beside the internet we like the FM radio functionality and users can also record their favorite music station or particular show with its FM recording option. Nokia Asha 202 music playback time is 25 hours which is great and to keep user more entertaining it supports EA sports gaming too. Users can download up to 40 games from EA Sports website depending on the operator setting and your phone plans.

For storage Nokia Asha 202 is limited to internal memory 10 MB with 32 MB ROM and 16 MB RAM. Memory can further expand to 32GB thanks to microSD card slot. To keep it connected and running Nokia Asha 202 gives a good 5 hours talk time with its Standard Li-Ion 1020mAh battery. Users can easily use Nokia Asha 202 for more than 3 days on a single full battery charge (depend on usage).

Nokia Asha 202 is great with most of its features. Major disadvantage is the Nokia old OS where Nokia can offer better to its user even within a cheap price. Nokia Asha 202 is good for long music listening but we do miss dedicated music keys. May be in future Nokia do consider it as one of the important trade in low end smart phones. Lastly the display can be enhance as few of the other smart phones of similar price range offer a bit better and more affluent display resolution.

Well it depends on what you're looking for and how much you wanted to spend. Nokia Asha 202 is the budget cracker smart phone, it surely attracts users who just want a basic phone with touch and type feature, and don't want to spend much. We highly recommend Nokia Asha 202 to student, semi professional and professional user who just wants durability with good phone features for basic calling and additional fun of a smart touch phone in a price of old bar handset.

Nokia Asha 202 currently available in a price range of 50$ to 65$, depend on the region and market condition. For price like this it's a great smart phone which offers decent features and Nokia durability. Even for users who are looking for a secondary handset we highly recommend Nokia Asha 202 as it sure keeps your different operator SIMs manageable with easy accessibility.

Over all we gave 6.5/10 rating to Nokia Asha 202.