Nokia Asha 308 and 309 officially launched! Recognised as smartphones!
Check out these bad boys, Nokia Asha 308 and 309. They’re a bit like the Asha 305 but so much sleeker! It’s like the love child of a Nokia N8 and C7 which then got super sleek and trendy.
The new devices offer a fluid ‘swipe’ user interface and an open environment for third-party app development – characteristics that have earned the complete Asha Touch range full smartphone classification from global market research companies and analysts such as GfK and IDC.
The Asha 308 and Asha 309 feature 3-inch, scratch-resistant, capacitive touchscreens, a 2-megapixel camera, powerful built-in speakers and the fun-to-use Asha Touch operating system.
The big deal here is what NokConv explains in the first paragraph. Yesterday you may have read Nokia India’s chief being asked about cheap Androids, to which he said they were half baked smartphones. Asha offers much more. Reviewers have been saying many times that these weren’t just cheap phones, but highly value for money phones offering great build, performance and smartphone function even though they were not officially recognised as a smartphone.
And now Asha are in the smartphone category. The original Asha touch were meant to fall into this but narrowly missed out. A shame as they were reported to being very popular, and could have helped Nokia’s marketshare for ‘smartphones’. Now they can.
The new models are Nokia’s most affordable capacitive touchscreen devices to date. Nokia estimates the retail price for the Nokia Asha 308 and Nokia Asha 309 to be about USD 99, excluding taxes and subsidies, with shipping expected to start in the fourth quarter of 2012.
309
308
Cheers Vignesh, Weirdfisher
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Sites That Link to this Post
- Asha 308 Now Available in India- RS 5685 : My Nokia Blog | October 22, 2012
here comes the trolls who think these won’t sell because galaxy y exists and other like it. news flash, the asha 305,306 and 311 are selling very well and they are nearly half the price of a galaxy y or other android phones from chinese oem. and these actually work,don’t die after a day of use, have good signal reception and are more durable.
Agreed. there is no competition with Gorilla glass at this price range for example.
The screen placement looks weird
But overall it’s nice
lwkmh…. smartphones indeed comparing this to bigger brothers n8 c7
To be honest, if nokia cont. like this, they are loosing luxu4y costumers
Troll more.
This is MeeGo experience, and this reminds me just like-a-smaller Nokia N9 with limited possibilities.
The most significant thing from MeeGo Harmattan Swipe is Swipe from the edges to minimize/Close app and its multitasking system.
Therefore these S40 swipe doesnt count as meego experience. Instead it is a homescreen with 3 pages which have dialer, apps and short cuts/widgets respectively.
“…earned the complete Asha Touch range full smartphone classification from global market research companies and analysts such as GfK and IDC.”
If the 1st, 2nd and 3rd gen iPhones hadn’t also been classified as smartphones, I would be so annoyed at this.
Looks like 3rd quarter Nokia smartphone sales will shoot through the roof despite any weakening Lumia sales
.
I would guess they at least for the time being keep Asha sales and revenues on the mobile phones category. The smart phone moniker is likely just for marketing purposes. But we’ll see of course.
they aren’t smartphones .. sorry.
Just marketing jargon to try to compete with lowest end Androids.
They are as much a smartphone, as iPhone or WP7 phones.
Maybe you could define “smartphone” ? It’s hilarious how you and that Finnish journalist go out of their way to make it _not_ a smartphone, what the hell is the difference to you?
I’ve seen resistive screen custom Android devices (looking at you LG) that can’t load apps, can we redefine those as featurephones too?
Depends on what you class as a smartphone.
To me its about about a device, that handles multiple media very well and can put to av devices such as TVs and headphones.
True multitasking, I want to get email whilst using music player or gps or another app.
A phone that can adapt to its surroundings, ie at home or when your sleeping or your having a meeting.
s40 does a lot of the above but in a half way house sorta way. ios does too.
Android sorta gets there with wp behind android but ahead of ios.
note i’ve left two oses out.
I don’t mind an os that can “just work” as i’ve said in other posts but that shouldn’t sacrifice functionality in terms of flexibility. “You can be simple but that shouldn’t make you look dumb!” thats another way of putting it
Pretty nice designs. At least on par with what they’ve been releasing. Still, I kind of liked the design on the 311 better. Fingers crossed on an Asha 5XX series coming out.
I suppose the screen is centralised for playing games in landscape mode, otherwise, move screen to top and add a keypad for blitzing out text messages.
As smart as iOS and WP.
No real multitasking.
No 3rd party IME.
No launch-on-startup.
The only reason android has 50% market share is because they call any cheap-assed POS running the OS a “smartphone”. In reality the figure is around around 30% , which is basically the same a apple.
Here (Brazil)
Asha 311 = R$: 399,00
Nokia 500 = R$: 399,00
Nokia 701 (Digital TV) = 599,00
No way for S40 feature phones!
Well then the 305/6 and 308/9 fit perfectly in the line up, now don’t they? And as you know the Symbians are in their twilight anyway.
Sometimes thinking helps.
nothing special why nokia gives each tech in amount ..Nokia asha 308 supports youtube streaming now but still not happy after see android.Nokia best luck for 2013 mid..
Those are pretty sexy lil phones. looks like a good option as a backup
नोकिया ने आशा 308 का फोटो दिखा दिया मार्केट में अगले माह आएगा