14 DAY TRIAL // Nokia's new Asha series of S40 phones has just been introduced earlier today during Nokia World conference.
Even though everyone guessed that Nokia will launch at least two new Windows Phone devices during the event, few were aware of the fact that the Finnish company plans to debut the Nokia Asha 200, 201, 300 and 303 feature-phones.
Nokia's latest financial results reflected a lower decline of its profits than it was initially expected, and that's due to the company's high number of feature-phones sold during past several months.
With Nokia Asha 200 and 201, the Finnish handset manufacturer targets emerging markets, such as India and China.
In this regard, it is worth mentioning that the name of the series, “Asha” is derived from Hindi and means “hope.”
More or less literally, Nokia “hopes” to conquer these emerging markets with its new affordable Asha series handset.
Highly successful in the Indian market, Nokia focused on dual-SIM phones only recently (i.e. Nokia 101).
Nokia Asha 200 is another cheap dual SIM phone that comes with a special feature called Easy Swap, which allows users to switch between SIM cards without rebooting the phone.
In addition, the phone features a full portrait QWERTY along with all sorts of integrated social networking, email and IM features, as well as RenRen, Orkut and Flickr support.
The Asha 200 embeds a microSD card slot for memory expansion (up to 32 GB) memory cards and a 1430 mAh Li-Ion battery that provides up to 52-hour playback time.
Nokia Asha 200 is expected to arrive in stores in Q4 2011 for a suggested retail price of 60 EUR ($85), excluding taxes and subsidies.
The second handset of the series, Asha 201 is basically the single SIM version of the Asha 200, thus it offers similar features.
According to Nokia, the Asha 201 is delivered with improved music features including a high performing loudspeaker, enhanced stereo FM radio and ringtone tuning.
Moreover, the Nokia Asha 201 supports push email as well as the popular Whatsapp messaging app.
Just like its dual-SIM twin, Nokia Asha 201 will be available for a suggested retail price of 60 EUR ($85) in a wide range of colors: Graphite, Green, Blue, Aqua, Pearl White, Light Pink, Pink and Orange. However, the phone will not be shipped until Q1 2012.
Nokia also mentioned that all Asha series phones are powered by 1 Ghz processors.
For more pictures check out Nokia Asha series gallery here at Softpedia.
