The first S40 phone with touchscreen + QWERTY, the Nokia Asha 303, drops by for a round of Angry Birds [VIDEO]

The top of the Asha line, the Nokia Asha 303, walked into our office to tell us about its 1GHz processor. We asked it about multitasking, but it quickly changed the subject by yelling “I have Angry Birds!”.

The 303 has several things that elevate it above the majority of other feature phones – from the fast processor, through a capacitive touchscreen and QWERTY to Wi-Fi connectivity and 3G with HSDPA.

We ruffled through the box quickly but found nothing unusual – a charger, a short microUSB cable (sigh) and a headset. The included 2GB microSD card was appreciated though.

The phone itself is much more interesting. It’s not as thin and compact as, say, the X3-02 but it packs a hardware keyboard that’s very comfortable for its size. The Asha 303 has a curved back (complete with a brushed metal back cover) to fit better in the hand.

Nokia Asha 303 in our office • What’s in the box

The bezel around the 2.6? screen seems rather large and it is. The screen remains at QVGA resolution where S40 phones have been stuck since forever. It’s tuned to ignore very light presses, which is often preferable to having it detect your finger midair.

On the software side, the Nokia Asha 303 comes with more stuff preloaded than S40s of the past. We already mentioned Angry Birds, but there’s also Asphalt 4 and other games. Then there’s Nokia Chat, the Nokia Browser (which works similarly to Opera Mobile), Nokia Social and, of course, Nokia Store to get even more apps.

Nokia Maps is on board as well, but it’s purely meant for use as a digital map, nothing more. There’s no built-in GPS receiver or route planning for cars. We’ve seen the same app in the Nokia C2-03.

Multitasking is not part of the latest feature phone software from Nokia. We hoped the 1GHz processor will finally unlock that door, but we were disappointed. You can control the music player and read/compose messages from the dedicated keys while in an app as you’ll see in the following video, but that’s it. This isn’t new either, the X3-02 could do the same.

That’s it for our initial impressions, we’ll get better acquainted with the Nokia Asha 303 and deliver the full review when it’s ready.

Dell drops out of netbook race, will be focusing on the ‘thin and powerful’ segment

Things are not going well for netbooks. After sales started spiraling downwards, hardware makers slowly started opting out of this segment. We saw last month that Samsung could be considering dropping netbooks altogether and concentrate on Ultrabooks and now Dell has come out and announced the same.

When the company’s Inspiron Mini was found to be missing from their site, The Verge contacted Dell on the matter. This is when they learned that Dell does not plan to sell them anymore. They also said that the “thin and powerful is where it is at for us”, hinting at the growing Ultrabook segment.

I find such news amusing because there was a time when everyone was suggesting that Apple should make cheap netbooks if they want to be relevant in the laptop segment but instead they went on to make the MacBook Air, a not-cheap-but-not-so-expensive-either thin and light notebook that revolutionized the segment and made everyone scramble to copy it (*cough Ultrabooks *cough*). They also said that the iPad was no match to the netbook and would fail but it’s currently selling in millions whereas netbooks are fading into obscurity.

Oh, how times change.

Sony Ericsson Xperia neo V drops by, we take it in front of a camera [VIDEO]

By popular request, Sony Ericsson Xperia neo V is our newest guest at the office. It’s the same phone (even the colour) we met a few months back, but the V (as in the Roman number 5, not the alphabet letter) version comes with a downgraded camera (5MP) and the company’s latest version of Android.

Let’s start with a some live pictures:

Sony Ericsson Xperia neo V

And here is the unboxing and the UI demo video:

We’ll take a look at the reason the Neo V came to be and its niche on the market in our full review. We are working on it right now and you should expect it soon.