Event Coverage

Hands-on: Nokia Lumia 610, 900, Asha 202, 203 and 302

By Sidney Wong - 27 Feb 2012

Hands-on: Nokia Lumia 610, 900, Asha 202, 203 and 302

Hands-on: Nokia Lumia 610, 900, Asha 202, 203 and 302 


Nokia 610 - The Most Affordable Windows Phone Handset Yet 

Nokia today took the wraps off its fourth Windows Phone handset, the Lumia 610 at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2012. Similar to the Lumia 710, the Lumia 610 is aimed at the entry level market segment with the younger generation as its target audience.

The Lumia 610 is the latest but most affordable handset out of the four in Nokia's Windows Phone portfolio.

The launch of the Nokia Lumia 610 coincided with the announcement that the Windows Phone platform will support devices with lower memory and processor requirements from April onwards with a software update. Nokia claimed that it is still able to deliver the same level of user experience on the Lumia 610 as the other more powerful devices.

Despite running on a slower processor and having less RAM, the Nokia Lumia 610 was able to offer a comparable user experience with Windows Phone 7.5 Mango.

As an entry level phone, it is obvious that the Nokia Lumia 610 will not sport the sturdy unibody design of the Lumia 800 or the large display of the Lumia 900. Nevertheless, the Lumia 610 felt good in our hands.

Although the Nokia Lumia 610 has a slimmer side profile (12mm) compared to the Lumia 710 (12.5mm), it weighs slightly heavier at 131.5g.

The Nokia Lumia 610 comes with a 5-megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash.

Nokia hopes to extend its reach to new and more affordable price points with the Lumia 610. It comes equipped with the standard suite of Nokia's exclusive apps which are Nokia Music, Nokia Maps and Nokia Drive.

  Key Highlights of the Nokia Lumia 610

  • Microsoft Windows Phone 7.5 Mango
  • 3.7-inch LCD capacitive touchscreen / 800 x 480 pixels   
  • Qualcomm Snapdragon S1 800MHz single-core processor 
  • 256MB RAM / 8GB onboard storage (no microSD expandability)
  • Wi-Fi 802.11/b/g/n
  • 5-megapixel autofocus camera / LED flash / f/2.2 aperture and 28mm wide angle lens 
  • Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
  • 1300mAh battery
  • 119 x 62 x 12mm
  • 131.5g
     
  • Availability: Expected to ship in Q2 2012 with a price of EUR189.

 

Nokia Lumia 900 - Going to a Market Near You

First launched at CES 2012, the Nokia Lumia 900 will be shipping to new markets in a DC-HSPA variant from Q2 onwards. Here's a quick refresh of the Lumia 900's specs:

The Nokia Lumia 900 is the first among the series to feature a front facing camera for video calls and self shots. It has a 4.3-inch ClearBlack AMOLED display and a 8-megapixel rear camera with Carl Zeiss lens.

One of the two new apps announced today is Nokia Reading, which provides a single and integrated hub experience for reading news, ebooks and audio books. There will be a mixture of free and paid content when Nokia Reading launches in April.

The Nokia Transport app is an excellent example of the company's strong emphasis on delivering great location based services to its users. Nokia Transport provides door-to-door, underground, tram, suburban train, and bus directions for over 500 cities across 46 countries, Seen here is the schedule on Barcelona's different modes of public transport.

 The Nokia Lumia 900 is expected to be priced at about EUR 480 before subsides and taxes.

Asha 202, 203 and 302 - New Asha Members 

From left to right: Nokia Asha 202 and Nokia Asha 203. <br> Image source: Nokia

Both the Nokia Asha 202 and 203 pair the traditional alphanumeric keypads with a 2.4-inch touch screen, making it easier for users to switch between the two modes of navigation for different scenarios such as messaging and web browsing.

For those who are looking for a dual-sim phone, the Asha 202 may be the ideal choice as it sports Dual SIM Easy Swap technology with a dedicated SIM manager to personalize the device and save up to five SIM cards with their respective information. 

The two Asha models are the first Series 40 devices to offer EA games. As part of a 60-day promotion at Nokia Store, consumers who purchase either model can download the EA 40-game pack (worth 75 EUR) for free. The estimated price for each model is about 60 EUR, excluding taxes and subsidies and are expected to start shipping in Q2.

Nokia Asha 302 <br> Image source: Nokia

As the first Series 40 phone to support Mail for Exchange, the Nokia Asha 302 is well suited for young business professionals who want to access their emails, calendars and contacts on an exchange server. It also adopts a more elegant QWERTY candy bar form factor to appeal to the young crowd. The Nokia 302 runs on a 1GHz single-core processor and supports 3.5G data speeds, which is on par with some of the entry level Android smartphones. 

All three new members of the Asha family come with Nokia Browser, which helps consumers save money by compressing data up to 90%. This enables users to enjoy a faster and more optimized web surfing experience on the Asha devices. The Nokia Asha 302 is available now at 95 EUR.

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