Nokia Asha 205 hands-on

The Nokia Asha 205 might actually be called that elusive Facebook phone with its dedicated Facebook button. As a portrait QWERTY device with very affordable price tag it is evidently geared towards teens and emerging markets, as it also comes in a single and dual SIM varieties.

There are a few vibrant colors for the casing (black, cyan, magenta, yellow, and white), and the phone runs on Series 40, which Nokia now insists to be called a smartphone platform due to the numerous Java apps and the like available for it.

The phone is all-plastic, small and light, though somewhat chubby, with a 2.4-inch non-touch display with fairly weak viewing angles, a VGA camera, and microSD card support. Connectivity is limited to 2G only, but with the new SLAM Bluetooth sharing technology you’d be able to quickly share files between devices. The dedicated Facebook button simply launches the Facebook app, but you can remap it to do something else.

One thing you can brag about with the Asha 205 is battery life that most smartphones can only dream of. The dual-SIM version of the device comes with a stand-by time of 25 days, versus the 37 days of the regular variation. Overall nothing fancy but the Facebook button, yet the world needs brand-name basic phones, too.