NOKIA Asha 305 Pro Reviews

Dumbphones have a lot to put up with these days. They're looked down upon or, if they're lucky, simply overlooked. It gets even worse for dual-SIM dumbphones, confined to their niche at the very bottom of the food chain. The "let them eat cake" attitude has done no one any good but that's exactly what feature phones have to deal with. Nokia are not giving up though. Skeptics would say it's because they have no other choice. They may have a point but the Asha phones we've reviewed so far have not let us down - and it's been quite a few of them. In less than a year, the Asha series has had good growth with the devices ranging across different form factors and levels of equipment. Nokia have been busy working on the S40 software too and we quite like some of the things they've done with it. In fact, the progress of the Asha touch interface is so impressive, it seems they've accomplished in one go what took Symbian a few years.

With all above said, you probably already got a sense of what type of a device the Nokia Asha 305 is. Cheap. With all the implications of the word. From the cheap plastic up front to the somewhat sluggish performance that mars the good interface ideas in the new Series 40. As a compromise-driven device, it’s the budget-savvy customer that it appeals to most. While we found some Asian retailers offering it for lower prices, in Western European markets it retails for over $110. There are some dual-SIM Android phones from less known makers like the Gigabyte Gsmart G1315 that actually cost as much as the Asha 305, but comes with a bigger and capacitive screen and all the benefits of Android. Also, in its own category of dual-SIM feature phones, there is the Samsung Star 3 Duos selling for nearly the same price, but with a much more convenient 3-inch capacitive screen. We would gladly sacrifice the two SIM slots for an actually decent low-end smartphone. Add in $10 or $20 and you jump into budget-smartphone territory with devices like the Samsung Galaxy Pocket and Galaxy Y which are better than the Asha 305 in absolutely every way you can imagine except for the dual-SIM card support.