Nokia Asha 501 review: The candy store kid

Display

The display on the Nokia Asha 501 is a 3" TFT unit of QVGA (240 x 320) resolution, which boils down to around 133ppi. That's not a lot by any standard, but in this class capacitive touchscreen with multi-touch support are still considered nice extras, so you shouldn't expect Retina-beaters.

Colors are nice and punchy and the screen is reasonably bright. Size may be an issue, as well as resolution, but the responsiveness has been notably improved from what we remember with the older Asha phones.

The display

Browsing the web and watching videos isn't the most compelling experience on a screen of that screen size and resolution of course.

And here go the stats - contrast levels are pretty good thanks to the nicely deep blacks, but the brightness isn't particularly high.

Sunlight contrast ratio

• Nokia 808 PureView
  4.698
• Apple iPhone 5
  3.997
• Samsung I9300 Galaxy S III
  3.419
• Nokia Lumia 925
  3.402
• Samsung I9505 Galaxy S4
  3.352
• Samsung Omnia W
  3.301
• Samsung Galaxy S
  3.155
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  3.127
• Samsung Galaxy S4 zoom
  3.118
• Nokia N9
  3.069
• Samsung Galaxy Note
  2.970
• HTC One S
  2.901
• Samsung Galaxy S II
  2.832
• Samsung Galaxy S II Plus
  2.801
• Huawei Ascend P1
  2.655
• Sony Xperia ZR
  2.672
• Nokia Lumia 900
  2.562
• Nokia Lumia 720
  2.512
• HTC One
  2.504
• Sony Xperia Z
  2.462
• Samsung Galaxy S III mini
  2.422
• Motorola RAZR i
  2.366
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  2.307
• Apple iPhone 4S
  2.269
• HTC One X
  2.158
• Nokia N8
  2.144
• Oppo Find 5
  2.088
• BlackBerry Z10
  2.051
• Apple iPhone 4
  2.016
• HTC One mini
  2.003
• Sony Ericsson Xperia ray
  1.955
• Samsung Galaxy Camera
  1.938
• HTC Butterfly
  1.873
• Sony Xperia V
  1.792
• Sony Xperia U
  1.758
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  1.691
• HTC One V
  1.685
• BlackBerry Q5
  1.682
• LG Optimus Vu
  1.680
• HTC Desire V
  1.646
• LG Optimus G Pro
  1.552
• LG Optimus 3D
  1.542
• Nokia Asha 302
  1.537
• Nokia Lumia 610
  1.432
• Gigabyte GSmart G1355
  1.361
• HTC Desire C
  1.300
• Nokia Asha 501
  1.270
• LG Optimus L7
  1.269
• LG Optimus L9
  1.227
• Meizu MX
  1.221
• Sony Xperia E dual
  1.203
• Samsung Galaxy Pocket
  1.180
• Sony Xperia tipo
  1.166
• Samsung Galaxy mini 2
  1.114

The pixel arrangement is standard RGB - it's an LCD screen so you wouldn't expect anything less.

You can find all about our display testing routines here.

Controls

The Nokia Asha 501 features a power button on the right side, which will also lock and unlock the device, although you can do without it as the phone can be nudged out of standby with a double tap on the screen.

The volume rocker sits comfortably in the upper right corner of the phone. All three buttons (power and volume) are solid to press and easy to locate by touch.

The right side of the phone

The left side of the Nokia Asha 501 doesn't feature any controls. There's a dual-SIM version of the phone but it doesn't have a side-mounted SIM compartment, which was typical for Nokia dual-SIM handsets of old.

The left side of the Asha 501

At the top there's the microUSB port, along with an old-gen Nokia charging port and a 3.5 mm headphones jack.

On the top

The bottom holds no controls whatsoever.

The bottom

Undoing the back cover is easy - a light push on the nub at the bottom will do and the phone's bottom part will pop out of the shell.

You can then go on and take the phone out. Doing so reveals the 1200 mAh Li-Ion battery, with the primary SIM card slot under it in the very battery compartment. The hot-swappable microSD and secondary SIM card slot are on the side. This actually means they could've been accessible on the outside too but Nokia went for exchangeable covers instead.

Removing the back cover

The battery on the Asha 501 is quoted at 624 hours of stand-by and 17 hours of calls for the dual-SIM version and almost double the standby time for the single-SIM variant.