Smartphones like the Nokia Asha 308 may be a lot cheaper than their Lumia siblings, but they still offer plenty of features and the ability to customise software to suit your needs. Customising the homescreen on Nokia Asha touch devices is just one area where you can make changes, and it can have a big impact on your enjoyment of the phone.

Unlock the screen on an Asha touch phone like the Nokia Asha 308, and the first thing you’ll see is a home page full of icons. These are shortcuts to all the applications and features on the phone: everything from your contacts list, to settings, to your photographs and Nokia Maps.

It’s inevitable that you’ll have favourite apps and shortcuts, and it’s easy to move things around on this page to suit your requirements. To move a shortcut on the homescreen, simply tap it and hold until the page turns into a grid. Then tap the icon you want to move, and press the square on the grid you want it to move to. Once you’ve moved all your favourite apps to the top of the page, or any other layout you’re happy with, simply hit the tick button at the bottom of the screen.

Customisation on Asha phones runs deeper than that, however, and you can also change the second and third home screens as well. Once again, tap and hold until the grid comes up, and this time swipe to the page on the right. When you do, you’ll be able to choose an app that appears every time you swipe to this page. You can pick from the phone dialler, the music player and the radio.

Swipe to the page on the left and things get even more interesting. The final page dedicates a good portion of the display to the time, day and date. A lot of people will naturally end up selecting this page as their default home page, and it comes with slightly more customisation than the middle screen.

On this page you’re not restricted to filling the screen with icons, and you can also choose to add a shortcut to pretty much anything you want. So if you’d rather see a photograph of your child, you can choose to delete all but the key shortcuts, accessing all other functions from the middle page.

Or you can choose from a large number of shortcuts, spanning everything from the SIM manager to your radio station list, timer to post-it notes, weather to the Nokia Store. You can also choose to add your favourite contacts, making it easier than ever to send a message or ring the people you care about most.

It’s all incredibly simple to do, and it’s the sort of thing most of us take for granted, but the ability to customise our phones is one of those things that help to make handsets a lot more personal.

What shortcuts have you added to the homescreen on your Asha phone? Leave a comment and let us know.