Nokia Rolls Out the Sociable Asha 210

Nokia Asha 210, launched today, is being touted by the Finnish mobile giant as a viable alternative to entry-level BlackBerry offerings. The keypad-candybar may not feature a smartphone OS such as Windows Phone or Android, but makes up for that with a heavily retrofitted Symbian S40, with apps for most web-based services and social networks. It competes with BlackBerry handsets and their BBM, with pre-installed WhatsApp.

Measuring 111.5 x 60 x 11.8 mm, and weighing just under 98 g, the Asha 210 offers a combination of a physical QWERTY keypad, and a 2.4-inch QVGA (320 x 240 pixels) screen. It’s available in various color options specific to regions

The Asha 210 features an unusual combo of connectivity options. It lacks 3G, forcing you to make do with EDGE (800/1800 MHz) when on the move, and even features variants with two SIM slots; but makes up for that with support for 802.11 b/g WiFi, so you can catch up on your favorite channels whenever you can. The phone ships with a minuscule 64 MB of internal storage, but gives you a micro-SDHC slot to expand storage all the way up to 32 GB.

In addition to common social media apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook, and Twitter, the Asha 210 ships with Nokia Nearby, a local app. The Nokia Slam feature lets you share stuff between two of these phones without spending the time to pair the two. As for battery life, Nokia is promising up to 46 days of standby battery life with a single SIM, and 24 days with dual SIM.

Slated for market launch before June, the Asha 210 is priced at $72