Nokia Asha 501 goes up for pre-order for Rs 5,199

Remember the Nokia Asha 501? The phone was announced with much fanfare in India and brings a new Asha UI experience to feature phones that gives a smartphone-like experience. The Asha 501 has now officially gone up for pre-order for Rs 5,199 on the company’s e-store.

Available in five colours, the Asha 501 isn’t the most powerful device, even for its price. The Asha 501 sports a 3-inch LCD display with QVGA resolution (320 x 240 pixels). The phone will be available in single and dual-SIM variants but will support only 2G. Other connectivity options include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and microUSB 2.0. The phone has a 3.2-megapixel camera at the back, but no flash.

Nokia’s multi-hued Asha 501

There’s also a microSD card slot with support for cards up to 32GB in size. Nokia is including a free 4GB microSD card with the phone. The battery on the phone is a 1200mAh one, which has a quoted talk time of 17 hours and a standby time of a whopping 48 days. For a closer look at the Asha 501’s specs, have a look at our specifications review.

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Nokia has borrowed usability elements from the MeeGo OS for the new UI. The Asha 501 sports a new interface that has a two-panel homescreen: one of the panels houses all notifications and recently-used items, which Nokia calls “Fastlane view”; the other panel gives you access to your apps. Fastlane also has shortcuts for posting to Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn etc. as well as shortcuts for the music player and message previews. It seems Nokia has taken a cue from Android’s lockscreen widgets, as you get a music player for the lockscreen too.