Nokia Asha 310 Review

Introduction

Nokia's Asha range proved plenty popular since its introduction, hitting the sweet price spot between lowly feature phones and smart handsets, and managed to keep the company afloat during the Lumia phones transition.

Now that Lumias cover the gamut of price points, the Asha range has to be reinvented a bit to stay in the game, and the affordable Asha 310 is the first in the line with both dual SIM slots and Wi-Fi connectivity. Is this enough to make it battle low-end Lumias and cheap Androids? Read on to find out...

In the box:

• Wall charger
• In-ear stereo headphones
• Warranty and information leaflets

Design

Asha 310 is a soapy-shaped, comfortable to hold little handset, in champagne, white or gray metallic shell, which is patterned on the back. It's no doubt chubby for today's standards, but since it is pretty small, that extra thickness makes it lie well in the palm, and not be completely lost in there.



There's a lot of polish and shine all over the chassis, including the call/hang physical keys underneath the display, which are in glossy piano black, and elevated to form a wave together with the microphone in-between.

The call key feels a bit iffy, with hollow feedback, and the side buttons, like the volume rocker and lock key on the right could use more click, but other than that they are all easy to feel and press without looking at the phone.

Nokia has done the right thing, and took one of the two regular SIM card slots on the left side of the phone. The feature is called Easy Swap for a reason, since you can hot-swap different carrier networks on the fly when the situation calls for it, while your default SIM is tucked neatly underneath the battery The microSD slot is also on the side, easing the access to additional memory, so in terms of access flexibility, the Asha 310 can put many to shame.


Display

The 3” capacitive touchscreen panel sports lowly 240x400 pixels of resolution, rocking it old school. Other than the grainy image on account of the low 155ppi count, the panel sports decent colors and viewing angles, but could use more brightness outside.

In addition, its contrast ratio leaves something to be desired, so sunlight visibility is not the Asha 310's strong point. There are oleophobic and scratch-proof coatings, though, so it's a decent panel for the phone's rock bottom price point.