Guide For All

Nokia launched their Asha range of feature phones, back in December 2011 and today we have with us, the Asha 300, the candy-bar feature phone, which was touted as one of the first phones to have Angry Birds pre-installed. Let’s find out if this Series 40 phone is any good.

Design and Build Quality
As is the case with most Nokias, the Asha 300 brings with it superb build quality and great attention to detail. The candy bar phone rests neatly in your palm and isn’t too heavy as well at just 85g. The phone is mostly built of plastic, but thankfully, there aren’t too many glossy bits, other than the screen and the chrome strip at the front. The volume rocker and the lock screen button are placed on the side. You remove the back cover with the help of the groove on the side. This process feels a little delicate and if you’re not careful, then there are good chances of the bottom retention clips breaking off.

This is a touch-and-type phone, so there’s no directional pad - just the keypad and the call answer and end keys, along with a shortcut to e-mail. The keypad is built well and the buttons offer good feedback. Having been accustomed to QWERTY keypads, going back to this conventional style was a bit odd, but those who are used to them should not have a problem. The rest of the connectors like the 3.5mm headphone jack, charging port and microUSB port are placed on the top. The Asha 300 also supports 3G, but there’s no front facing camera for video chat. In the box, you get a 2GB microSD card, charger, user manual, data cable and headset. Overall, a pretty good feature set in a very nice form factor.