Nokia Asha 200 Review

Introduction:

Dual-SIM phones, as the name suggests, can work with two SIM cards simultaneously, which is basically like having two phones fused into a single device. The budget-friendly Nokia Asha 200 is such a phone, and teenage users are its primary target. Among its main selling points are the portrait QWERTY keyboard for quick and easy texting and integration of social networking features. Care to learn how the device performs in real life? Then read along...

The box contains:

• Wall charger
• Wired stereo headset
• User guide

Design:

The Nokia Asha 200 is an ideal example of how affordable phones can also be appealing to the eye, especially when it comes in a wide variety of vibrant colors. Simply put, it is a cute little phone: plastic, yet light and well made. Thanks to its curved sides, the handset fits naturally in the palm of your hand, which makes it really easy to operate. It is neither too tall, nor too wide, so your thumbs will have no troubles reaching all of the device's physical buttons.



You can compare the Nokia Asha 200 with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

Speaking of buttons, a 2-button volume rocker is nowhere in sight, which is somewhat disappointing as it complicates adjusting the phone's volume level quite a bit. Another design feature that we are not quite satisfied with is the 5-way navigational button in the middle. During normal usage, our thumb slipped right off numerous times pressing the middle button by accident.

The hardware QWERTY keyboard, however, is something that we cannot complain about. Sending a dozen of text messages is all it takes for your thumbs to get really familiar with it, after which typing those lengthy emails and wall posts becomes an effortless task.
 


Display:

The Nokia Asha 200 comes with a 2.4-inch QVGA display, which is not a touchscreen, and considering the phone's price point, you can't really ask for more. Thankfully, it gets the job done well, and other than its poor outdoor visibility, it isn't plagued by any major imperfections. Nevertheless, if you are really picky, be aware that the display supports a palette of about 262,000 colors, so gradients do not look as smooth as they do on more advanced screens, but in reality, we weren't too bothered by that.

Interface and Functionality:

Users who are not familiar with the Series 40 platform and its interface will be feeling lost at first and will have to spend a lot of time fiddling through menus, customizing shortcuts, and getting used to the way things are organized. Quite a drag, we know, and we really wish that the interface was designed in a more user-friendly manner.

You can choose between having a home screen with widgets and shortcuts, or a clean, minimalistic home screen with no widgets on it. We personally prefer the latter option as it is far less cluttered, although having the aforementioned widgets could be very useful as well. Keep in mind, however, that interacting with some of the widgets is somewhat laggy, but other than that, we didn't experience any other performance issues with the device's interface.


Since the Nokia Asha 200 is a dual-SIM phone, you get to choose what each active SIM card is used for, which is pretty neat. For example you can have calls and text messages going through your primary one, while the secondary SIM card takes care of data connectivity. The latter can be replaced on the fly, and the phone can store settings for up to five different SIM cards.


Out of the box you get native Facebook, Twitter and Flickr integration via the Social app, which is great news if you are an avid social network user. Also, instant messaging client that can work with Facebook Chat, Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger, MSN Messenger, and more comes out of the box.



Internet browser and Connectivity:

No matter how hard we tried, the stock web browser on the Nokia Asha 200 simply refused to work in our case. Instead, all we got upon attempting to load a web page was a “No server access” error message. We installed a third-party web browser from the Ovi Store (Ucbrowser 8) and it was good enough for browsing mobile versions of web sites.


The only way to have internet access on your Asha 200 is via its 2G radio with support for EDGE, so downloading apps or checking your Facebook feed take a while. Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR is included for wireless file transfer between devices. Alternatively, there is a microUSB port with support for mass storage mode, but transfer speeds are somewhat slow for a wired connection, so you will have to be patient.

Camera:

The 2-megapixel camera on the Nokia Asha 200 failed to impress for a number of reasons. First of all, photos lack detail due to the absence of auto-focus, and the shutter lag of over a second could be pretty annoying. But then again, we weren't really expecting anything better from such an affordable phone. When it comes to videos, however, they look terrible and are practically unusable.


Multimedia:

Displaying album art is the most “advanced” functionality that you get with the phone's stock music player. Really, there is absolutely nothing fancy about it: just the most basic of features such as sorting music by title, artist, or album name have been covered. But if you want to use the music player at all and not be limited to FM radio only, providing your own microSD is a must since the phone's 10MB of internal storage are microscopic. Once that is covered, you are free to annoy bystanders by playing your favorite tunes over the phone's loudspeaker.

The phone can play back videos as well, but we doubt that you will be spending much time watching them on its relatively small display. In case you are wondering, the maximum video resolution supported is 320 by 240 pixels. Our MP4 and Xvid video samples were watchable, although slightly choppy on several occasions.

Performance:

The Nokia Asha 200 left us with mixed feelings about its in-call audio performance. Voices through the earpiece are sufficiently loud, yet pretty muffled, thankfully not to the point where understanding the other party gets too difficult. On the other side of the line, our voice is loud enough to be understood, but accompanied by hints of distortion and digitizing.

Up to 7 hours of talk time is what you will get out of a single charge, and that is more than acceptable. If left in stand-by mode, the phone's battery will require a charge after a whole month if a single SIM card is used, or after 3 weeks if two of them are installed, and these are pretty good figures as well. Additionally, the phone can deliver the impressive 52 hours of music playback, which is comparable to what the hottest of smartphones are capable of.

Conclusion:

Considering that the Nokia Asha 200 currently costs under $90 off contract, there is quite a lot that you get for your money, so we would gladly recommend getting it if you need a low cost dual-SIM device. It looks good, has a nice physical keyboard, and comes with a whole bunch of social networking features, which makes it especially suitable for young users.

Software version of the reviewed unit: 10.60

Nokia Asha 200 Review: