Nokia Asha 502 review

Nokia, the Finnish smartphone and tablet maker, has always been considered a game changer in the ever-evolving smartphone industry. As a... thumbnail 1 summary

05:08

Nokia, the Finnish smartphone and tablet maker, has always been considered a game changer in the ever-evolving smartphone industry. As a rival to other world leaders including Samsung and Apple, the firm fell behind for a while but has now made a huge comeback with its line of Lumia devices running the Windows Phone OS.

At last year's Nokia World event, the company introduced six new handsets. While the high-end phablets took the spotlight, Nokia also made sure that it still caters to the needs of its budget customers. Introduced at the event, the Nokia Asha 502 budget smartphone is a shining example of how hard the firm is still trying to take over the low-end smartphone market by stuffing a bunch of impressive features into a small-sized device.
The Nokia Asha 502 is the successor to the Asha 501, and has some noticeable bodily and internal OS feature tweaks.
In hand, the Asha 502 feels both compact and strong. We found its build and overall design very appealing, and the phone itself is comfortable to carry around.
After spending a decent amount of time with the Asha 502, testing its battery life, camera, Internet connectivity, gaming capabilities and much more, here is what we think about this budget handset.

Build quality and design
The Nokia Asha 502 is extremely comfortable to hold, as its sharp corners give the user a better grip and reduce the chances of it slipping and falling. The small device measures 99.6 x 59.5 x 11.1mm and is well suited for users who have average or small hands. One its most distinctive features is the plastic monoblock body. The entire back panel and all four edges of Asha 502 are encased in a transparent material, giving the handset a crystallized effect.

Display
The Nokia Asha 502's 3-inch screen is smaller than those of other devices in the same price segment. Users coming from phones with 4-5-inch screens might be able to get used to it, but if you like the feel of phablet devices that are currently popular, you'll find the small screen cumbersome to operate.
The Nokia Asha 502's multi-touch screen features a QVGA (320 x 240 pixels) resolution. The screen can display only 256,000 colours as opposed to the full range of 1.6 million colours that is the usual standard. When set to full brightness, the screen is easily visible under direct sunlight.

Software/Interface
The Nokia Asha 502 runs on the latest Asha OS, version 1.1, which is an update to the software used by the Asha 501. The OS uses simple swipe gestures for most actions, and the back button is mainly used to close apps and return to the main menu screen.

Camera
Even though it's a budget device, the Asha 502 has a 5-megapixel fixed-focus rear camera with a f/2.4 aperture and an LED flash with a range of one metre. There's no front-facing camera and very few camera software features.
The camera interface of Asha 502 is pretty easy to operate. The camera app can be directly accessed from the lock screen by swiping upwards. Once open, you can long-press on the screen to access the camera settings which include flash adjustment options, self-timer, white balance, filters, camera shutter sound and a choice of five resolutions.

Features and performance
In use some stuttering was noticeable while swiping between screens, and there was a few seconds' lag while closing applications. However, by long-pressing the back button, we were able to kill apps faster. Nokia says you can double-tap the screen to wake the phone from sleep, but 6-10 were usually required before the feature worked.
The phone has very little internal memory, with only a few MB free for users. However, the handset comes bundled with a 4GB microSD card, and you can use cards up to 32GB in size. We also noted that it took a considerable amount of time for the handset to show the contents of the memory card, which we suspect is due to the low amount of RAM.