Nokia Asha 202, 203 Hands-on Review

We got our hands on the Nokia Asha 202 and Asha 203 - the new ultra low end additions to Nokia’s Series 40-based Asha series and they aim to offer a lot of bang for very little buck.

First of all, the Nokia Asha 202 and 203 are identical except for one thing - the Asha 202 is a dual-SIM handset, while the Asha 203 only supports one SIM card.

Both phones come in a classical candy bar form factor with T9 keypad, and also a 2.4-inch QVGA resistive touchscreen. You can feel that the screen is resistive and it takes slightly more effort and concentration to get used to it. That's one corner Nokia has cut short to arrive at the price tag.

The Asha 202 and 203 look as if they had a metal rim up front, but that’s only the looks - in reality they are all plastic. Design-wise they reminded us the cheapo Nokia 101, with a diagonal cut on the sides where the back cover fits in. The pair comes in a choice of four colors – dark red, black, silver white and dark grey.

In terms of software you get Series 40, which has grown to include a number of features and both phones come with plenty of games, even titles from EA, but you have to consider the small screen. The Ashas do have a browser and all other basic applications.

On the back of the Asha 202 and 203 there's a basic 2-megapixel fixed-focus camera. It has decent amount of settings for its class, but it captures poor video in only the barely usable QCIF format. All of that gets stored on the 10MB of internal memory, but mostly on the microSD card you choose to insert. Up to 32GB cards are supported. There's also an FM Radio and a very loud speaker. Check out our images of the two handsets below.