A while back, out of a whim, I got myself the Asha 210. A friend of mine had just joined Whatsapp, she told me she was IM-ing from an Asha 200 device and I got curious;”How do notifications work on that thing?”, “what’s the Whatsapp for S40 experience like? Any different from the Android/BB experience?”. Those were the kind of questions going through my head. Eventually, I ended up with the Asha 210 because, unlike the 200, the Asha 210 features Wi-Fi connectivity.
Now it had been at least 2 years since I used a featurephone and considering I’ve never bought a Nokia device – I swore off Nokia many years ago – this was all kinda out of my comfort zone, to say the least. But I came off mildly impressed. Not necessarily because the Asha 210 is a great device but because I honestly expected less. I mean, it’s an okay device for what it does. And aside the cringe-worthy fact that Nokia continues to tout it as a “smartphone” (that’s very arguable), I wouldn’t be against anybody’s choice of this as a primary device. But for me, coming from an Android experience, dumbing-down has been a pain in the rectum.
Connecting
My first task was to use the Wi-Fi. I couldn’t connect for the life of me! You know those free/paid Wi-Fi services where after you connect, you’re redirected to a login page once your fire up your browser? Has anyone tried doing that on an Asha 210 device? Pain in the rectum. Don’t even get me started on Wi-Fi networks over proxies. You’d have a better chance uploading Facebook photos from a Nokia torchlight device. Anyway, I was able subscribe to a 20MB/24 hour data plan so the urge to fling the phone across the room was a little dampened.
One to the good stuff, the main purpose why I got the phone; Whatsapp. This is the only good thing I have been able to use the device for so far. Well… I later found the email app is pretty good and easy to setup too.
Anyway, I was so impressed with Whatsapp for S40, I had to tweet about it immediately:
I have to say I'm really impressed with Whatsapp for Nokia S40 (Asha)
— Múyìwá Mátùlúkò (@MuyoSan) August 20, 2013
The thing actually minimizes and notifies you of new messages when you're offline!
— Múyìwá Mátùlúkò (@MuyoSan) August 20, 2013
And recording voice messages is just as easy on Android.
— Múyìwá Mátùlúkò (@MuyoSan) August 20, 2013
How a team of 45 staff members (15 or so of which are non-tech staff) pulls these off on 7 different platforms is amazing
— Múyìwá Mátùlúkò (@MuyoSan) August 20, 2013
S40, Belle, BB7, BB10, WP8, Android, iOS, Whatsapp is top-notch on all 7 platforms. Just 30-something developers do all the work.
— Múyìwá Mátùlúkò (@MuyoSan) August 20, 2013
Needless to say, I’m a big fan of Whatsapp. Any device that will run Whatsapp well is good enough for a start.
Sidenote: These tweets were published way before the Facebook acquisition. I’m quite reserved about my love for WhatsApp these days.
The Asha 210 comes pre-installed with Twitter and Facebook. I don’t use Facebook so I decided to try out the Twitter app.
Aswear, tweeting from this phone is a chore. But I just have to see it through at least 3 days
— Múyìwá Mátùlúkò (@MuyoSan) August 20, 2013
TL auto-refreshes but interactions don't. And offline notifications don't take you to the appropriate tab. Sigh
— Múyìwá Mátùlúkò (@MuyoSan) August 20, 2013
How do people that tweet from this device cope? Everything is just clustered and confusing. I can't keep up with my TL and interactions
— Múyìwá Mátùlúkò (@MuyoSan) August 20, 2013
I realise I was probably too quick to write-off the Asha 210. Especially as I still planed to use it for a couple more days at a stretch. That didn’t work out though. I didn’t get enough motivation to put myself through such an ordeal so abandoned it.
I don’t know, maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’ve gotten too dependent on smartphones. Or am I the only one in this school of thought:
As far as mobile devices are concerned, once you go smart, going dumb or semi-smart is really HARD!
— Múyìwá Mátùlúkò (@MuyoSan) August 20, 2013
This post was originally published on Mobility
