Nokia announced the Asha 501, the company’s latest full touch phone in the Asha series with Swipe UI. Shilpa Dhamija, Content Manager at FoneArena spoke one on one with Peter Skillman, VP, Mobile Phones User Experience, Design, about Asha 501, the next generation Asha phone. In this exclusive interview, Peter talks about what makes Asha 501, a unique product in the Asha family – The new hardware, new web-on-phone experience. All, at a very low price. Watch the full video interview below.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVKLL8P6Vfo
Full text of Peter Skillman’s interview with FoneArena
Q) Asha 501 comes across as one of the most distinguishable phone in the Asha family, but what about the phone, will make a consumer shift focus from other phones in the same price range?
Peter Skillman : ” The Asha 501 is a product that is really redefining the segment of the affordable smartphone under $100. Incredibly robust, compact, pocketable with super performance and a really great experience. ”
Q) Give us three most unique features of the Asha 501 that will steal the consumers attention and perhaps satisfy his/her Asha experience.
Peter Skillman : “The three things that really differentiate the Nokia Asha 501 are first design and colour. We have got six highly saturated colours (Bright Red, Lemon Yellow, Parrot green, Ice Blue, White and Black) that are really about personal expression. And then you have swipe for everything you love. So for example, you double tap to wake. I can swipe from the home screen, you can see that really nice to access transition inspired by the N9. Two home screens, including fast lane which is your present and when I scroll down you see your past, and when you pull down from the future, It pulls down so you can see your future. Present, Past and Future, all in one place. So, it’s swipe, it’s the incredible colour and design and then it’s also smarter, more personal, and more affordable Internet.”
Q) Never seen before, is a hardware , like this from Nokia. Asha 501 does flaunt vibrant shades like several other Nokia devices, but the aesthetics are very different here, especially for a phone in an economy range by Nokia.
Peter Skillman : “The construction is made of two parts. A seamless removable mono body that wraps around a single display assembly, with a capacitive screen of hardened glass, and when I take these two, you can also have direct access through scallops to 4 gig in the box microSD card, a SIM card. When I assemble them together -its a super tight, really robust high quality premium experience. And when you look for example at the experience for accessing and controlling your SIM cards; you see this incredibly visual solution for changing your SIM. If you look at the response time here. I have access to my WiFi here, Bluetooth, we have Slam so you can share images between two devices without doing any Bluetooth configuration. Just touch them together, and they instantly pair. ”
Q) The Internet experience changes a lot in this Asha device, as compared to the predecessors. Whats unique about the new feature Xpress Now?
Peter Skillman: “Let’s talk a little bit about the Xpress browser and also Nokia Xpress Now. The Xpress browser makes your browsing much more fast and also much more affordable. We have a back-end that takes all the data and compresses it, so it’s about 10 percent of the payload. You save 90 percent that makes it much more efficient, which is really great in 2G networks in particular. In WiFi, you have the high performance. And then Nokia Xpress Now, i’ll go ahead and open up the browser here. This is the browser. You can see. You have number of different heading making the internet more accessible. Favorites, you have games, and news, social, entertainment and sports. But I can also go direct to Nokia Xpress Now – which is a web application, which is also making the internet more personal. Here we take your location, we take the browsing history of those people that are like you and also your own preferences in terms of what your like, and the we present in a magazine like format, information that’s local. For example, here in India you can see what’s hot. You can see stories about cricket, election results etc. And it makes it very browse-able.”