I was recently invited to Nokia Asha 311 Bloggers’ meet in Bangalore by Blogger’s Mind. I was wondering what is so special about the Nokia Asha phone that bloggers who use Smart Phones have been called to check out this features phone. So on a rainy afternoon I made my way to Vivanta by Taj at Trinity Circle on MG road in Bangalore. Surprisingly I was the first to arrive on the scene and no one arrived till sometime later due to heavy rains. Thus I got time to explore the Nokia Asha 311 phone on my own.
At first glance, Nokia Asha 311 has a clutter free display with full touch. It also seemed to be quite a robust phone with Corning Gorilla Glass. Surprisingly it didn’t seem like a features phone at all as it had so many apps which made it look and function like a smart phone. I was really impressed that Nokia Asha was able to give the features of a smart phone to a customer who wants these features but can’t afford to buy high-end smart phones! Where else can you find a 1 GHz processor in a features phone when even mid-level smart phones don’t have the same? Combine that with the Asha Smart UI, you know you got a killer product on your hands! Looks like Nokia really hit the jackpot with this phone!
Slowly bloggers started trickling into the meet as rain stopped outside and turned into a drizzle. No drizzle was going to keep away bloggers from checking out the Nokia Asha 311 and understanding its features well. We were greeted warmly by the Nokia team who urged us to have a working lunch while checking out the phone as it was already past lunch time. There was informal discussion around Nokia products like Lumia and Pureview but everybody was waiting to see what Nokia had up their sleeve with the Nokia Asha 311 phone! We were presented with just a single slider about all the features and specifications of Nokia Asha 311 which was a welcome relief from hundreds of slides generally presented by phone companies!
Bowled over by so many features that this ‘features’ phone has? Suddenly wondering whether your smartphone was really worth the high price tag considering you are getting most of those useful features in Nokia Asha 311 itself? I won’t be surprised by your thoughts as I was thinking the same too! I mean where else would you get amazing features like Scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass, Capacitive touch screen, 3.2 megapixels camera in a so-called features phone? Add the fact that you can browse on 3G here with browser 2.0 which has up to 85% compression! You could be forgiven for cursing your last smart phone buy!
If you are a gamer, you are in for a royal treat if you buy the Nokia Asha 311. They have a tie up with the leading games company EA Games where you can get up to 40 games for free which include popular classics like Need for Speed, FIFA, Cricket, etc. With the great battery backup, you could be anywhere on the earth without access to a charging point; but could still play your favorite games anytime and never worry about your battery draining out! The biggest surprise of Nokia Asha 311 is the availability of Angry Birds game which has gained cult status now!
The ever popular Angry Birds game is a favorite of kids of age groups from 6 to 60 (and well beyond that..!) This renders beautifully well on the Nokia Asha 311 mobile which gives you the feel of playing it on the computer or on a smart phone. We had a fun activity at the Nokia Asha 311 Bloggers’ meet in Bangalore where we played first 5 rounds of the game and the top 3 winners got Nokia Bluetooth headsets free! It was a fun activity which relieved us from the monotony of listening to talks and discussing about phone features!
One more game changing feature of the Nokia Asha 311 (and the Nokia Asha series phones) is the access to over 45 lakh songs via Nokia Music store. This gives you access to many songs of all kinds of genres and moods so you will be never at a loss of a song for any situation! The downloads are very quick too – less than 30 seconds to download a song over a 3G connection. All these music downloads are legal and as they are DRM free, you can easily share with your friends and family very quickly too! Have a look at this funny advertisement coming on television right now about how easy it is download the song of your choice through Nokia Asha phones!
Last but not the least I would like to mention about the Maps feature of Nokia Asha 311 which is very effective in the absence of GPS in the phone. This uses information from 3 nearest cell towers to find out the exact location of the phone user. This is very helpful in big cities like Bangalore, Mumbai or Delhi where you could be lost if you are new to the city. Nokia Asha 311 comes to your rescue with its amazing maps feature!
I think the Nokia Asha 311 is a steal at Rs.7000 (approximate price) for the kind of features it has; which elevates it from the features phone category to a smart phone category. I really hope to get my hands on one soon so that I can gift it to my wife and make her a smart phone user too! I would love to chat with her over WhatsApp which is one of the many smart phone apps which comes preloaded with Nokia Asha 311. I don’t have to worry about spending a lot on 3G data too as it comes with 4GB of 3G data on Vodafone, which can be used over 4 months as my wife gets used to using 3G web browsing and applications! Now, ain’t that super cool? 🙂