Nokia Asha 308 and Nokia Asha 309 join the Asha Touch family

The Nokia Asha 308 and Nokia Asha 309 are being welcomed into our family of Asha Touch smartphones today.

These beautiful and sleek handsets offer an innovative and affordable smartphone experience, packed with Internet connectivity, apps, maps, social networking and games.

The new devices offer a fluid ‘swipe’ user interface and an open environment for third-party app development – characteristics that have earned the complete Asha Touch range full smartphone classification from global market research companies and analysts such as GfK and IDC. 

The Asha 308 and Asha 309 feature 3-inch, scratch-resistant, capacitive touchscreens, a 2-megapixel camera, powerful built-in speakers and the fun-to-use Asha Touch operating system.

The Touch experience

The swipe-inspired Asha Touch experience is fast, entertaining and intuitive. Scrolling and swiping on the responsive capacitive touchscreen is used to navigate and explore each of the new phones.

You can easily and quickly swipe between your application launcher with all your apps in one place; your  ‘My Screen’ can be personalised with favourite contacts, apps and shortcuts — and a third home screen provides quick access to most-used features such as the phone dialer or music player.

Web and social

Being connected to the Internet lies at the heart of all Nokia’s Asha Touch devices.

The Asha 308 and Asha 309  feature Nokia’s new Xpress Browser, which uses cloud compression technology to make surfing the web faster whilst consuming up to 90 per cent less data.

One of the nice features of the Nokia Xpress Browser is that you can visit YouTube in the browser, and actually stream YouTube video via the phone’s video player.

We will be taking a closer look at the Nokia Xpress Browser, including the great support for web apps, in an upcoming Conversations post, so keep your eyes peeled.

As well as being connected to the Internet, we know that new Asha owners value being connected to their friends on social networks. That’s why Facebook, Twitter and local social networks in selected markets are pre-loaded apps on the new devices.

They are not the only ways of staying in touch either: there’s also email, chat, instant messaging and, on the Asha 309, WhatsApp. 

Games & Discovery

If playing games is important to you, then the Asha 308 and Asha 309 have some real treats for you to look forward to.

 

Just like the other Asha Touch phones, each new device comes with 40 free EA games for you to download and keep forever. The leading titles include Tetris, FIFA 2012, and The Need for Speed The Run.

If that isn’t enough, check out the 22 classic arcade games that you can buy in the Nokia Store from NAMCO BANDAI, such as Pac-Man, Ridge Racer Drift and Final Fantasy. There are thousands of other games and apps for you to enjoy in the Nokia Store as well.

After playing some games, how about leaving the virtual world and meeting up with some friends? Nokia’s awesome location-based platform is another key feature of the Asha Touch family.

The Asha 308 and Asha 309 (which supports WiFi positioning) have Nokia Maps 2.0 so you can discover places of interest, find things to do and share them with your friends.

Your local maps are preloaded on the phone, and it’s easy to add more, so there are no additional download costs to pay.

Nokia Asha 308

Available in black or golden light, the Nokia Asha 308 has an Easy Swap Dual SIM so you can change SIM cards without turning off the phone.

Different SIM cards lets you use different phone numbers with one device, and you can manage data allowances on different networks to save money.

Nokia Asha 309

The Nokia Asha 309 is a single-SIM, WiFi-enabled device for fast and cost-effective access to the Internet. 

It also comes with an Internet radio app for unlimited streaming of tens of thousands of global online radio stations. It comes in white or black.

Joining the Asha Touch family

With a great Internet experience, a choice of fantastic games, access to social networks, Nokia Maps to help you discover new places and an intuitive and fast user interface, both new devices feel right at home in the Asha Touch family.

Our Asha Touch range was launched earlier this year with the Asha 305, Asha 306 and Asha 311.

With the Asha 308 and Asha 309 slotted neatly into the middle of the family, now there’s an Asha Touch to suit everyone’s preferences and budget.

The new models are Nokia’s most affordable capacitive touchscreen devices to date. Nokia estimates the retail price for the Nokia Asha 308 and Nokia Asha 309 to be about USD 99, excluding taxes and subsidies, with shipping expected to start in the fourth quarter of 2012.