Nokia Asha 502 Dual SIM Review & Full Specs

When Nokia launched Asha 502, 503 and 500, One thing was clear–they are pretty serious about the platform– not only they upgraded the overall hardware in terms of camera, design languages and quality, they also rolled out OTA update to platform, WhatsApp, Imaging Apps and so on. Nokia 502 was recently

 See also: Nokia Lumia 1320 & Nokia Lumia 525 Are Both Coming to India

announced and we take a look on how the phone has really turned out keeping in mind the price of the phone.

Hardware & Design (9.5/10) 

While I could not figure out the exact processor and memory on this phone, the overall hardware the platform gives you a smooth experience. I am detailing out all minute details as below.
Design
Nokia made sure that using the dual shot concept and crystal like design, Asha 502, 503 and 500 is super attractive. It feels like there is already a case on the phone and corners being completely transparent the look and feel gets premium treatment.  IMO with this deign upgrade, Asha 502 is all set to kick out Asha 501 from the league.


Touch:
Asha 502 got a huge upgrade to the display and touch experience. Asha 501 had a big time issue with touch as the screen wasn’t really smooth and always felt of low quality. 502 touch is super smooth and it doesn’t catch lot of dust which makes sure the response to your swipe, tap and so on are lot better this time and they even respond to quick flicks.
Display

• The 4 inch screen supports 320 X 240 Resolution (QVGA.)
• Its an LCD screen and prone to scratches. Now the unit which you will buy will have a screen guard already and it will get lot of scratches. Only when you take that off, you will get to know. I have it off and it does have scratches from Keys and stuff in my bag like battery charger, other phones when kept together. So make sure to keep a screen guard always on.
• The colors look natural and not over toned.
• Supports Double Tap to wake up and Glance Screen. They can be disabled from the settings.
• When in sunlight, it will be hard to read them or watch a movie. Since the clear black technology which makes sure of readability in direct sunlight is missing, be prepared for that.

Battery Life (9.5/10)

Battery Backup of Asha 502 is just brilliant. The first thing you should know that its not a 3G phone and its only on 2G which is a major factor contributing towards its battery life.

• 1st run : 10 hours of continuous Music over headphones and speaker. I had the phone on standby for 3 days before draining it completely. This also included an hour of radio.
• 2nd run : Used with two SIM, on 2G with twitter, facebook and whatsapp usage all the time. Battery lasted for 2.5 days.

The phone charging time is very low. It takes maximum of 20 minutes to charge up its 1010 mAh battery and looking at the draining experience, expect 502 to last for 3-4 days on average us and 2 days on heavy

Performance (8/10)

 
The overall performance of 502 is decent. I did not find it lagging heavily everywhere except few places like switching to camera when listening to music and so on.
You should all know that Asha 502 is not a true multi-tasking phone. Most of the apps don’t run in background except few like Twitter, Facebook, Nokia XPress browser and so on. Others you will have to quit to get back to the app drawer. Also when you use Camera or any other heavy app, the other makes a quit. So when you are using camera, the music will stop.
If I have to compare it with Asha 501, its much smoother now even though there is no major bump in the hardware. The screen and improvement in the platform has improved the overall user experience.
Most of the hiccups show up when you are using web apps and its mostly because they depend on internet speed. Since 502 is only 2G, the speed is pretty slow and hence the experience.

Asha 1.1. Features of OS ( 7/10)

While we have covered on Asha Platform extensively in Nokia 501 Review which you can read here, below are features which are new:
WhatsApp:
I have all the details about WhatsApp for Asha 502 listed here. In a nutshell it works without any hiccups and slowness. New message get notified both on the notification center which is a slide away and over lock screen. You can tap and open it instantly. Though I am not 100% sure, most of the messages loaded up as soon as they arrive. This means when you tap to open, you don’t have to wait for them to load.

Fast Lane:
Starting with 1.1, the Fast Lane, section which logs all your activities including tweets, pictures, music and so on, is now more personalized and gets better with tighter integration with them.
You can also control which apps appear on your fast lane. This lets you take control on your privacy and also de-clutter your Fastlane. So for example, the fast lane list down all your tweets and since you know what you are tweeting it doesn’t make sense. You can go to Settings > Fastlane and remove apps which are not required.

Easy capture and share videos:
The camera functionality has been improved so you can quickly take a picture and share wherever you want. You can swipe up from lock screen to open camera, take picture, swipe left and then select and share picture over any social network. One swipe can take you to the recent image, one tap to the camera settings and so on. More details in camera section.
Imaging Apps:
As the camera has improved drastically from 3MP to 5MP and addition of flash, there are new apps which are introduced like Picfeed, Pictag and Photofunia. All these arrangements make sure that sharing picture is fun on Asha.
Others:
The platform also supports Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync and VoIP. Developers can actually make use of these API’s i.e. Share API and VOIP API to integrate their apps into sharing feature. As an example, you can configure your social accounts like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and so on and the apps can hook with this API to share them over social network. This is exactly how Windows Phone Share API works.

Camera (8.5/10)

Asha 502 comes with camera which most of the people expected in Asha 501 and it comes with Flash. Not only there is a huge improvement in quality of the picture. Asha 501 was 3MP while Asha 502 comes with 5 MP camera and the LED flash is making all the difference, specially when its low light.

Asha 1.1 bought new features to camera which you will not find on phones at similar pricing.

• You can use your camera from the long screen but swiping it up.
• Long press on the camera view and you have access to all settings.
• Apply filter as you take pictures.
• Swipe left and it becomes a video recorder.

The camera has fixed focus like point and shoot. It uses the LED flash thrice for improving the picture quality where its bit dark. The images captured appear in your Fastlane and can be accessed quickly instead of taking multiple steps to open from gallery.
Below are some camera samples:

Music + Nokia Music (9/10)

 

The latest Asha Platform update has integrated Nokia Music in the Music App. So when you launch it, the music store is right upfront along with option to see songs based on Albums, Artist and Song Names. You also have the playlist at the end which you can see by scrolling a bit.  The best part of the store is that you don’t even need to signup using some Nokia account which is a perfect scenario for pickup and play

Nokia Music Store: It beautifully lists down the thumbnails of the latest and popular movies when you open it. The top three are listed right there which you can expand by tapping on the category head. So you have

• Featured albums
• Tops songs
• Top Albums
• Genres
• Playlist

The Playlist section is what I loved the most which is like  recommendation for best of artists section. The songs are available for instant download and since they aren’t very high quality format, it download much faster.
What I really liked about the player is that it doesn’t differentiate separately between music files in SD card and on Phone Memory. It just picks up all the songs and lets you play them seamlessly. So you can have music from store or from your PC, it works together.
Once you have played a couple of songs, the player’s top section has three recently played songs which you tap to start listening instantly. You can also access your recently played song from Fastlane, Over the lock screen with option to pause it or skip to next song.
Audio (Level of Volume): When used over speakers, its loud but its not that loud that you can listen clearly in crowd while the phone stays in the pocket. I travelled in bus and all crowded place to figure this out. When you play it in less crowded or rather in your room and office, its brilliant. When used over earphones, the quality is decent enough. Better audio files you have in your phone, better the sound will be.

Song Quality: Like I said above they aren’t very high quality, as a matter of fact they are +eACC format but the hardware and software work together to deliver the best experience. The speaker of 502 is loud to enough to turn some necks around or wake your partner if you set it as alarm tone.
When used over earphones that come along with 502, it delivers good experience. By no means its a low quality earphone. The only thing which you may not like is that they are not ergonomic. It hurts a bit when used for long time.
Available to your PC:  All the songs which you download from Nokia Music store is available on your PC when you connected as Removable Storage or Mass Storage mode. You can copy them from the Music Store Downloads folder.

Gaming (6/10)

Most of the games that come on Asha 502 are web based games or Java games and its mostly because the platform is yet to support anything yet. In one line, this phone is not for hard-core gaming, its for casual gaming.
The list of games which come preinstalled are Bejwelled, Fifa 13, GT Racing, Kingdom & Lords, Pacman, Ridge Racing, Real Football, The Sims, Wonder Zoo  and so on. Most of them are from Gameloft. They are ok in quality and you can play them with hiccups.

Value for Money (8.5/10)

The phone is priced at Rs 5750 in India and looks a bit costly but the real question is who are the target users. Keeping in mind the price of the phone which is set to Rs 5750 in retail market, you can always find Android phones in this price with touch screen. However the biggest problem with Android phones at that price is stability and updates.
Asha 502 is not only extremely stable phone but the recent update to Asha 1.1. made sure that users can also trust them on future updates. One of the major game changer in 1.1 is the whatsapp support on dual sim which was missing in its previous and on any dual SIM phone from Nokia.
The target users are those who are looking to upgrade from Type or feature phone to a smartphone which can include all social integration, whatsapp, a camera, smooth touch experience and brilliant support for Music. Asha 502 is able to deliver all of them well.

Conclusion:

The long battle is yet to be won but Asha has started making its place in the segment of users who need touch phones along with simplicity, social integration, a decent camera and design and give users an option to have a beautiful phone at the same price they been paying for not so looking great phones. Asha 502 has marked the beginning of a different segment of phone with a new platform. The phone is good to buy and worth the price.

Asha 502 is a decent smartphone for users migrating from type to a touch phone with social integration, unique design, and a camera with Flash.

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