Nokia Asha 210 Review and Full Specification : Techmistory
The Nokia Asha 210 is a Series 40 phone featuring dual-band EGSM and dual SIM support (RM-924). The device has a full QWERTY keyboard for easy text input, Nokia Xpress Browser with Series 40 Web Apps support, social networking integration and support for up to 32 GB memory card. Other features include Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR with Slam and MIDP Java 2.1 with additional Java APIs.
Nokia Asha 210 :- Design
At 111.5 x 60 x 11.8 mm, the Asha 210 is just a tiny bit smaller than the Asha 205 which measures 112.8 x 61.1 x 13 mm. It’s pretty petite by today’s standards and fits very well in your hand. There’s just the slightest curve at the back, which makes the 210 comfortably to use. And since it only weighs 97 grams, you can very easily use it one handed as well. We got the black color version for review, but you can also get the Asha 210 in a striking yellow color, the usual white color, a shade of magenta, and my personal favourite, cyan blue. Build quality is very solid, and I’m pretty sure this little phone can survive quite a lot of drops and falls.
There were no creaks or loose parts on our unit, which isnt really a big suprise considering it’s a Nokia mobile phone after all. The materials used dont feel cheap at all, and the glossy hard plastic at parts of the front, coupled with the matte keys and the matte back panel, do make for a pretty interesting appearance. That being said, the glossy parts of the front around the screen, are a bit of a fingerprint magnet, so you’ll end up wiping it every so often.
Especially the display. Coming to the front of the phone, you have a 2.4 inch 320 x 240 pixels, 167 ppi pixel density, 65K colors, LCD landscape display. Exactly the same size as the screen on the Asha 205. 6 years ago, this would have been considered a huge screen, but by today’s giant phone display standard it’s a bit small. Still for this segment, it’s more than large enough, and gets the job done very well, and since the screen is in landscape, it appears quite large, even though it’s actually the same size as the 206 screen, which is in portrait.
You’ll notice color degradation even at mild viewing angles, but it’s not too bad. Resolution is a bit of a downer though, but the pixel density and colors is stil higher than the asha 311. Legibility in outdoor sunlight was also pretty good, though you’ll have to manually pump up the backlight to it’s maximum setting. Incase you’re wondering, the keyboard backlit is a constant brightness, independent of the display brightness setting. Above the display, you have the lone, centrally located earpiece. Since this isnt a touchscreen device, there’s no need for a proximity sensor. There’s no accelerometer built-in either, nor any front facing camera. But at this price point it’s no surprise. Below the display is where all the excitement lies.
There’s the full QWERTY keyboard underneath a 5-way D-Pad which is flanked by left and right softkeys, and the usual calling keys. You’ll also notice two shortcut keys, one with a prominent Facebook logo, which as you can guess, is a dedicated Facebook key that opens up the Facebook app for you to immediately update your status and so forth. In select markets like India, this will be replaced with a button featuring the WhatsApp logo instead, for quick access to the free messaging service.
The other shortcut key has a camera icon on it, but you can configure it to open any other app of your choice, say for example the music player, or email, etc. Below that, is the four tiered QWERTY keyboard, with each key individually raised at a curve. The keys have very good feedback to them when pressed, and we were typing out plenty of words-per-minute after getting used to it within a couple minutes of usage. Each key is easily identifiable, and the key placements are intuitive enough.
But that being said, I thought the keyboard was a tiny bit cramped compared to the Asha 205, requiring you to type with your nails or fingertips. Or maybe I’m just too used to touchscreen phones. At the top, you have a standard oldschool Nokia charging port here, which requires the proprietary Nokia charging pin. There’s also a standard 3.5mm audio jack, to which you can plugin in any pair of headphones.
But right in the middle of the two, is a microUSB port which allows for connectivity and charging. This is a huge advantage over the Nokia Asha 205, which is a great phone but doesn’t have a MicroUSB port. You’ll also notice a notch here to remove the back panel situated here. On the right side, you have no ports or buttons, keeping things minimalistic. On the left side, you’ll find the second SIM card slot, protected by a plastic flap. Both simcard slots are for regular simcards, incase you were wondering. None of that microSIM or nanoSIM card nonsense here, heh.
Coming to the back, there’s the lone 2 megapixel camera, in a very Lumia-styled module and the loudspeaker located towards the bottom. No LED flash unfortunately. The camera resolution is quite bad by today’s standards, but we’ll discuss that later on. The loudspeaker is quite loud though, about the same levels as the Asha 205. And finally, coming to the bottom, you have no ports at all. All in all, a pretty cute looking QWERTY phone, with very “classic Nokia” build quality.
Nokia Asha 210 : Hardware
The Asha 210 isnt a smartphone, so you cant really expect it to have insane specs. Because S40 doesnt have multi-tasking abilities, and is more or less a very efficient mobile operating system, things are generally quick all over, with no slowdowns as such. Unfortunately I could not find out any information on the processor or RAM inside the Nokia Asha 210.
There’s 64 MB of internal memory, which isnt much, but you do have a microSD card slot present as well. Apart from that, there’s GPRS/EDGE, Wifi, Bluetooth v2.1 with EDR, and an FM radio with FM recording as well. Nokia’s new “Slam” technology works great, and is basically an easier way to share files over bluetooth, working in a similar way to the “Bump” app for iOS and Android.
The fact that the 210 has Wifi is yet another advantage it has over the 205. No GPS or 3G support unfortunately.
Nokia Asha 210 : Software
Ah now things get interesting. The Nokia Asha 210 runs Series 40 User Interface, which is much different from the Series 40 full-touch-UI on the Asha 311, which itself is different from the swipe-based UI in the Nokia Asha 501. The layout is much more traditional, and rather similar to Symbian, with a set active homescreen pane that you can tweak slightly. By default you have a list of your SIM cards which are active in the SIM card 1 and SIM card 2 sections, the time & date, a shortcut to music, shortcut to radio, and a row of icons below which by default contains shortcuts to the browser, camera, Nokia music store, Nokia Store and a new section called ‘Notifications’ where you can see… well…. notifications for events like a new text message, missed call, etc.
The left softkey takes you to the ‘Go to’ shortcut menu, while the right softkey takes you to the SIM card manager. In the center, is the shortcut to go to the main menu, which contains a familiar grid of icons, through which you can scroll down. There are also keyboard shortcuts, like how you can long press the Sym key to get toggle Bluetooth on/off, or you can toggle silent mode by long pressing the Ctrl key or toggle wifi with the space bar. Long pressing the 0 key takes you to the Internet Browser.
There are also keyboard shortcuts, like how you can long press the Sym key to get toggle Bluetooth on/off, or you can toggle silent mode by long pressing the Ctrl key or toggle wifi with the space bar. Long pressing the 0 key takes you to the Internet Browser.
Then there’s also the Facebook button on the left side that takes you to the pre-installed Facebook app. As I mentioned earlier, some markets like India, they sell the Asha 210 with a WhatsApp button which takes you to the preinstalled WhatsApp messenger app instead.
Honestly, it’s all the usual S40 that we’ve seen on various Nokia budget devices before. You cant multi-task any application outside of the music player though, which is no surprise since this is the way S40 has been handling things for a while now. Everything is quick enough and while loading apps can take a second, the entire phone is generally very responsive. The only mildly annoying thing was that most phone settings are buried under a set of menus that you’ll have to navigate through to find what you’re looking for. Pretty much the same as previous S40 phones.
Coming to messaging, the Asha 210 excels thanks to it’s full QWERTY keyboard. It’s easy enough to type one handed, though I personally could only type quickly using both hands. As I mentioned before though, it can take some time to get used to the QWERTY keyboard.
Software-wise, the word correction works well enough as well, and you can insert various media content to turn an SMS into an MMS. You can insert images, a short video clip or audio recording, etc.
Nokia Asha 210 : Camera
The Nokia Asha 210 has a 2 Megapixel camera which is much better than the lowly VGA on the Asha 205, but both devices can only record video at just QCIF @ 10fps. Image results were pretty much what you’d expect for the price, with meh colors and lacking details. There’s no LED flash and as such low-light images can be pretty noisy. Video results are pretty terrible, as you’ll see in the video below.
Nokia Asha 210 : Battery
The BL-4U 1200 mAh battery of the Nokia Asha 210 is rated at 1104 hours of standby time, 12 hours of talk time and 40 hours of music playback which is substantially more than the BL-5C 1020 mAh battery of the Nokia Asha 205 which manages 890 hours of standby time, and about 11 hours of talktime. On moderate usage, with light web browsing, about an hour of fm radio listening, 10 minutes of camera usage and about 30 minutes of calls, I was able to easily get about three days worth of usage out of the Asha 210.
Nokia Asha 210 :- Design
At 111.5 x 60 x 11.8 mm, the Asha 210 is just a tiny bit smaller than the Asha 205 which measures 112.8 x 61.1 x 13 mm. It’s pretty petite by today’s standards and fits very well in your hand. There’s just the slightest curve at the back, which makes the 210 comfortably to use. And since it only weighs 97 grams, you can very easily use it one handed as well. We got the black color version for review, but you can also get the Asha 210 in a striking yellow color, the usual white color, a shade of magenta, and my personal favourite, cyan blue. Build quality is very solid, and I’m pretty sure this little phone can survive quite a lot of drops and falls.
There were no creaks or loose parts on our unit, which isnt really a big suprise considering it’s a Nokia mobile phone after all. The materials used dont feel cheap at all, and the glossy hard plastic at parts of the front, coupled with the matte keys and the matte back panel, do make for a pretty interesting appearance. That being said, the glossy parts of the front around the screen, are a bit of a fingerprint magnet, so you’ll end up wiping it every so often.
Especially the display. Coming to the front of the phone, you have a 2.4 inch 320 x 240 pixels, 167 ppi pixel density, 65K colors, LCD landscape display. Exactly the same size as the screen on the Asha 205. 6 years ago, this would have been considered a huge screen, but by today’s giant phone display standard it’s a bit small. Still for this segment, it’s more than large enough, and gets the job done very well, and since the screen is in landscape, it appears quite large, even though it’s actually the same size as the 206 screen, which is in portrait.
You’ll notice color degradation even at mild viewing angles, but it’s not too bad. Resolution is a bit of a downer though, but the pixel density and colors is stil higher than the asha 311. Legibility in outdoor sunlight was also pretty good, though you’ll have to manually pump up the backlight to it’s maximum setting. Incase you’re wondering, the keyboard backlit is a constant brightness, independent of the display brightness setting. Above the display, you have the lone, centrally located earpiece. Since this isnt a touchscreen device, there’s no need for a proximity sensor. There’s no accelerometer built-in either, nor any front facing camera. But at this price point it’s no surprise. Below the display is where all the excitement lies.
There’s the full QWERTY keyboard underneath a 5-way D-Pad which is flanked by left and right softkeys, and the usual calling keys. You’ll also notice two shortcut keys, one with a prominent Facebook logo, which as you can guess, is a dedicated Facebook key that opens up the Facebook app for you to immediately update your status and so forth. In select markets like India, this will be replaced with a button featuring the WhatsApp logo instead, for quick access to the free messaging service.
The other shortcut key has a camera icon on it, but you can configure it to open any other app of your choice, say for example the music player, or email, etc. Below that, is the four tiered QWERTY keyboard, with each key individually raised at a curve. The keys have very good feedback to them when pressed, and we were typing out plenty of words-per-minute after getting used to it within a couple minutes of usage. Each key is easily identifiable, and the key placements are intuitive enough.
But that being said, I thought the keyboard was a tiny bit cramped compared to the Asha 205, requiring you to type with your nails or fingertips. Or maybe I’m just too used to touchscreen phones. At the top, you have a standard oldschool Nokia charging port here, which requires the proprietary Nokia charging pin. There’s also a standard 3.5mm audio jack, to which you can plugin in any pair of headphones.
But right in the middle of the two, is a microUSB port which allows for connectivity and charging. This is a huge advantage over the Nokia Asha 205, which is a great phone but doesn’t have a MicroUSB port. You’ll also notice a notch here to remove the back panel situated here. On the right side, you have no ports or buttons, keeping things minimalistic. On the left side, you’ll find the second SIM card slot, protected by a plastic flap. Both simcard slots are for regular simcards, incase you were wondering. None of that microSIM or nanoSIM card nonsense here, heh.
Coming to the back, there’s the lone 2 megapixel camera, in a very Lumia-styled module and the loudspeaker located towards the bottom. No LED flash unfortunately. The camera resolution is quite bad by today’s standards, but we’ll discuss that later on. The loudspeaker is quite loud though, about the same levels as the Asha 205. And finally, coming to the bottom, you have no ports at all. All in all, a pretty cute looking QWERTY phone, with very “classic Nokia” build quality.
Nokia Asha 210 : Hardware
The Asha 210 isnt a smartphone, so you cant really expect it to have insane specs. Because S40 doesnt have multi-tasking abilities, and is more or less a very efficient mobile operating system, things are generally quick all over, with no slowdowns as such. Unfortunately I could not find out any information on the processor or RAM inside the Nokia Asha 210.
There’s 64 MB of internal memory, which isnt much, but you do have a microSD card slot present as well. Apart from that, there’s GPRS/EDGE, Wifi, Bluetooth v2.1 with EDR, and an FM radio with FM recording as well. Nokia’s new “Slam” technology works great, and is basically an easier way to share files over bluetooth, working in a similar way to the “Bump” app for iOS and Android.
The fact that the 210 has Wifi is yet another advantage it has over the 205. No GPS or 3G support unfortunately.
Nokia Asha 210 : Software
Ah now things get interesting. The Nokia Asha 210 runs Series 40 User Interface, which is much different from the Series 40 full-touch-UI on the Asha 311, which itself is different from the swipe-based UI in the Nokia Asha 501. The layout is much more traditional, and rather similar to Symbian, with a set active homescreen pane that you can tweak slightly. By default you have a list of your SIM cards which are active in the SIM card 1 and SIM card 2 sections, the time & date, a shortcut to music, shortcut to radio, and a row of icons below which by default contains shortcuts to the browser, camera, Nokia music store, Nokia Store and a new section called ‘Notifications’ where you can see… well…. notifications for events like a new text message, missed call, etc.
The left softkey takes you to the ‘Go to’ shortcut menu, while the right softkey takes you to the SIM card manager. In the center, is the shortcut to go to the main menu, which contains a familiar grid of icons, through which you can scroll down. There are also keyboard shortcuts, like how you can long press the Sym key to get toggle Bluetooth on/off, or you can toggle silent mode by long pressing the Ctrl key or toggle wifi with the space bar. Long pressing the 0 key takes you to the Internet Browser.
There are also keyboard shortcuts, like how you can long press the Sym key to get toggle Bluetooth on/off, or you can toggle silent mode by long pressing the Ctrl key or toggle wifi with the space bar. Long pressing the 0 key takes you to the Internet Browser.
Then there’s also the Facebook button on the left side that takes you to the pre-installed Facebook app. As I mentioned earlier, some markets like India, they sell the Asha 210 with a WhatsApp button which takes you to the preinstalled WhatsApp messenger app instead.
Honestly, it’s all the usual S40 that we’ve seen on various Nokia budget devices before. You cant multi-task any application outside of the music player though, which is no surprise since this is the way S40 has been handling things for a while now. Everything is quick enough and while loading apps can take a second, the entire phone is generally very responsive. The only mildly annoying thing was that most phone settings are buried under a set of menus that you’ll have to navigate through to find what you’re looking for. Pretty much the same as previous S40 phones.
Coming to messaging, the Asha 210 excels thanks to it’s full QWERTY keyboard. It’s easy enough to type one handed, though I personally could only type quickly using both hands. As I mentioned before though, it can take some time to get used to the QWERTY keyboard.
Software-wise, the word correction works well enough as well, and you can insert various media content to turn an SMS into an MMS. You can insert images, a short video clip or audio recording, etc.
Nokia Asha 210 : Camera
The Nokia Asha 210 has a 2 Megapixel camera which is much better than the lowly VGA on the Asha 205, but both devices can only record video at just QCIF @ 10fps. Image results were pretty much what you’d expect for the price, with meh colors and lacking details. There’s no LED flash and as such low-light images can be pretty noisy. Video results are pretty terrible, as you’ll see in the video below.
Nokia Asha 210 : Battery
The BL-4U 1200 mAh battery of the Nokia Asha 210 is rated at 1104 hours of standby time, 12 hours of talk time and 40 hours of music playback which is substantially more than the BL-5C 1020 mAh battery of the Nokia Asha 205 which manages 890 hours of standby time, and about 11 hours of talktime. On moderate usage, with light web browsing, about an hour of fm radio listening, 10 minutes of camera usage and about 30 minutes of calls, I was able to easily get about three days worth of usage out of the Asha 210.
Nokia Asha 210 : Specification
Operating System :- Nokia OS
Development Frameworks :- Java Series 40 Web Apps
Screen Color Depth :- 16 bits
Screen Size :- 2.4 inches
Display Technology :- LCD transmissive
Device Size :- 111.5 x 60 x 11.8 mm
Volume :- 76.27 cc
Weight :- 99.5 g
Keypad :- QWERTY Keyboard
Other Keys :- 2 Labeled Soft Keys, 5-way Scrolling, Call Creation Key, Call Termination Key, Camera Key, Community Key
Frequency Bands :- GSM 1800, GSM 900
Data Bearers :- Dual Transfer Mode (MSC 12), EGPRS, GPRS
Regional Availability :- Global
Notes :- Combined call termination and power key, RM-926, 850/1900
Extra Features :- Dual SIM, Flight Mod, FOTA Firmware over the Air, Nokia Life, Nokia Store, Themes Notes :- with RM-924
Java Runtime :- Java Runtime 1.1.0 for Series 40
Java Technology :- JSR 139 Connected, Limited Device Configuration (CLDC) 1.1, JSR 118 MIDP 2.1, JSR 75 FileConnection and PIM API 1.0, JSR 82 Java™ APIs for Bluetooth 1.1, JSR 135 Mobile Media, API 1.1, JSR 172 J2ME™ Web Services Specification 1.0 (RPC package), JSR 172 J2ME™ Web Services Specification 1.0 (XML Parser package), JSR 177 Security and Trust Services API for J2ME™ 1.0 (SATSA-APDU package), JSR 177 Security and Trust Services API for J2ME™ 1.0 (SATSA-CRYPTO package), JSR 179 Location API for J2ME™ 1.0, JSR 184 Mobile 3D Graphics API for J2ME™ 1.1, JSR 205 Wireless Messaging API 2.0, JSR 226 Scalable 2D Vector Graphics API for J2ME™ 1.1, JSR 234 Advanced Multimedia Supplements 1.1 (audio3d), JSR 234 Advanced Multimedia Supplements 1.1 (music), Nokia UI API 1.1, JSR 211 Content Handler API 1.0.1, JSR 248 Mobile Service Architecture Subset 1.1 for CLDC 1.1
Recommended Java SDK :- Nokia SDK 1.0 for Java
Java API Access Permissions :- Java API Access Permissions
Certificates :- UTI Root
UAProfile Link :- Profile
Example User Agent Header :- Mozilla/5.0(Series40; Nokia210/1.0; Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1) Gecko/20100401S40OviBrowser/2.2.0.0.36
Browser Details :- HTML 4.0, HTML over TCP/IP, Javascript 1.8, Nokia Xpress Browser, WAP 2.0, XHTML, XHTML 1.1, XHTML over TCP/IP,XHTML over TCP/IP (Americas)
Camera Resolution :- 1600 x 1200 pixels
CMOS Sensor :- 2.0 Megapixels
Camera Digital Zoom :- 4 x
Camera Focal length :- 35 mm
Camera F-Stop/Aperture :- f/2.8
Camera Focus range :- 60 cm to infinity
Camera Image Formats :- JPEG/Exif
Camera Features :- Auto and Manual White Balance, Full Screen Viewfinder, Self Timer, Still Image Editor Video Recording Resolution :- 176 x 144 pixels
Video Recording Frame :- Rate 10 fps
Video Digital Zoom :- 4 x
Video Recording Formats :- H.263
Video Features :- Video Player, Video Recorder, Video Streaming
Video Playback Formats :- 3GPP formats (H.263), H.264/AVC, MPEG-4, WMV
Video Playback Frame Rate :- 15 fps
Graphic Formats :- BMP, GIF87a, GIF89a, JPEG, M3G, PNG, SVG-T, WBMP
Theme Version :- Series 40 Theme v3.0
Suggested Theme Template :- Series 40 Compact UI
Audio Features :- Audio Equalizer, Audio Recorder, AMR, Handsfree Speaker, Loudness, MP3 Ringtones, Music Player, Stereo FM RDS Radio
Audio Formats :- AAC, AAC LC, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, HE-AAC v2, MIDI, Mobile XMF, MP3, MP4, NRT, SP-MIDI, True tones, WAV, WMA
Speech Codecs :-AMR-NB, EFR, GSM FR, GSM HR Notes1 up to 103 phon, 2 with radio recording
ROM Memory :- 64 MB
RAM Memory :- 32 MB
Memory Card type :- Micro SD
Maximum Memory Card Size :- 32 GB
Maximum Heap Size :- 2 MB
Maximum JAR Size :- 2 MB
Local Connectivity :- Bluetooth 2.1 +EDR, Nokia AV 3.5mm
Bluetooth Profiles :- HFP 1.5, HSP, OPP, PBAP 1.0, SDAP, SPP 1.0
WLAN support :- 802.11b/g, EAP-SIM ,WEP, WPA, WPA-Personal, WPA2 (AES/TKIP), WPA2-Personal Notes1 with Slam
Messaging :- AMS, IM, MMS+SMIL, SMS
Messaging Features :- OMA Instant Messaging and Presence Service v1.2.1
OMA Multimedia Messaging Service v1.3
Email Solutions :- Gmail: IMAP/SMTP, Hotmail: MSP, Nokia Mail: IMAP/SMTP, Nokia Messaging 3.2, Yahoo: IMAP/SMTP
Supported Email Protocols :- IMAP4, POP3, SMTP
Power Management :- 2.0mm, Charger Connector, USB Charging
Battery model :- BL-4U 3.7V 1200 mAh
GSM Talk Time up to :- 12.0 hours
Standby Time up to :- 1104.0 hours
Music Playback Time up to :- 40.0 hours
Nokia Asha 210 Review and Full Specification : Techmistory
Reviewed by Ankit Kumar Titoriya
on
05:15
Rating:
Reviewed by Ankit Kumar Titoriya
on
05:15
Rating:
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