Nokia Asha 210 Comes to India at Rs 4,500: Can the Social Phone Outdo Sales of Samsung Galaxy Chat?

It's not only BlackBerry that manufactures QWERTY keypad handsets, the trend has been picked up by smartphone makers like Samsung and Nokia also. It's just that, unlike BlackBerry, their handsets are not necessarily expensive but instead most of these devices offer some kind of feature related with social networking or chat.

Click Here For Nokia Asha 210 Handset Gallery

Justifying it's demand in the market, Nokia recently launched their Nokia Asha 210 QWERTY phone. Initially, the phone was launched with a Whatsapp dedicated key, however, to meet the demands of the consumers, Nokia Asha 210 now is coming in two variants - one with a dedicated WhatsApp button and the other with a Facebook button. The What'sApp version is available for pre-orders on Infibeam while the one with the Facebook button is also on pre-orders on Flipkart. Both are priced at Rs. 4,499.

However, Nokia phone has many tough competitors to face when it comes to the Indian market. The devices are Micromax Q34, Micromax X78, Motorola EX226, and others mostly belong to Nokia itself. But GizBot has cared to come up with a brief and comparative rundown of the Nokia Asha 210 and Samsung Galaxy Chat. Launched last year, Galaxy Chat is a decent QWERTY keypad phone which scored high sales in the mid market segment.

Display

Nokia Asha 210 sports a 2.4 inch TFT display with a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels and a pixel density of 167 ppi approximately while the Samsung Galaxy Chat comes with a little bigger 3 inches TFT screen offering the same resolution to that of Asha 201.

OS, RAM and Processor

Nokia Asha 210 runs on Nokia Series 40 OS with a 32 MB RAM while the Galaxy Chat comes with a Android v4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich OS with a 850 MHz Processor along with a support of 512 MB RAM. Thus Samsung beats Nokia in this aspect.

Camera and Storage

Asha 210 features a 2MP rear camera and has an 64MB internal storage with a micro SD card slot that supports up to 32GB additional storage. On the other hand, Samsung Galaxy Chat comes with a similar camera but with more internal storage capacity of 4 GB that can be expanded up to 32 GB via microSD card.

Connectivity

Nokia Asha 210 comes with a dual SIM (mini SIM) support with GPRS, EDGE, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and micro USB 2.0 while the Galaxy Chat features a single SIM with GPRS, EDGE, 3G, WiFi, USB and Bluetooth. Nokia Asha has a better dual SIM but lacks on 3G support.

Battery

Both Nokia Asha 210 and Samsung Galaxy Chat is powered by a 1,200 mAh battery but Nokia claims to offer up to 1104 hours standby and 12 hours talk time and Samsung say it gives 14 hrs (2G) and 5 hrs (3G) of talk time and 580 hrs (2G), 390 hrs (3G) in standby mode.

Other Features and Price

Nokia Asha 210 comes with a two variant, one with a dedicated Facebook button and the other with a dedicated What'sApp buttonat the price of Rs. 4,499. Asha 210 also comes with the Nokia Slam feature for sharing images and videos through Bluetooth without paring. Also, the handset comes with Easy Swap Dual SIM, preloaded YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Gmail applications. On the other hand, Samsung Galaxy Chat comes with a dedicated ChatON key. The Galaxy Chat comes at a bit more cost of Rs. 5,900.

Conclusion

Although, Galaxy Chat comes with a better display size than Nokia Asha 210, it fails to come with a dual SIM support. But Galaxy Chat comes with an Android platform which is liked by many.

On the contrary, Nokia has the advantage of having the dedicated Facebook and What'sApp button integrated in the device itself and a lesser price. However, Samsung has more advantage compared to Nokia Asha 210 because, it supports 3G which Nokia doesn't have.

Thus, one may easily opt for Samsung Galaxy Chat by adding another thousand rupees rather than getting a 2G device. But if one has a confined budget and a craving for social networking site esp. Facebook, Nokia Asha 210 is not a bad choice.