The world’s first phone with a dedicated WhatsApp button on its front has been unveiled by Nokia in the form of the Asha 210, and it’s coming to India soon, with an unknown price tag. However, since its international retail value has been penned down as $72, we can expect it to hit the nation, placed somewhere around the Rs. 4,000 mark.
Pitching it as a social device, the Finnish brand seems to have laid its focus on accessibility rather than advanced technology. The Nokia Asha 210 bears on it a QWERTY keyboard, possesses Wi-Fi functionality and to top it all off of course, there’s the dedicated WhatsApp key for instant messaging.
Yellow, cyan, black, magenta and white are the five shades which it will be made available in. And moreover, single as well as dual SIM options will be launched, offering more for potential buyers to choose from.
Sized at 111.5mm x 60mm x 11.8mm, the Asha 210 tips the scales at 97.3 grams. Its front is occupied partially by its 2.4-inch screen which holds a QVGA resolution of (320×240), and proffers up to 65 thousand colors. And as far as memory is concerned, it features up to 64MB of internal storage, apart from a microSD card slot with support for expansions of up to 32GB.
The only camera that finds its way onto the device is its rear shooter which is of 2MP capacity. It has been coupled with a smart imaging software whose self-portrait feature provides voice-guided assistance as to where they should point it in order to get the face in frame. Moreover, an image-editing feature has also been granted to the phone.
Besides WhatsApp and YouTube, Facebook and Twitter apps would also come pre-installed. Another important piece of software is the company’s Slam feature (also seen on the Asha 205) which allows for the sharing of images as well as videos with other device over Bluetooth without the need to pair them up.
When kept on standby, the Nokia Asha 210 can last for up to 46 days with a single SIM and up to 24 days with two SIMs. Interested parties can expect its release date to fall sometime during the second quarter of 2013.
