In addition to being a fantastic, affordable smartphone, the Nokia Asha 501 is also a great music player, offering the ability to organise albums, play your favourite tracks, set up playlists and more. Read on to find out how to get the most out of music on the Asha 501.

The music player on Nokia’s latest affordable smartphone is split into four main sections: Songs, Artists, Albums and Playlists. This makes it easy to access the music you want, no matter how many different albums you have stored on the phone.

If you’re looking for an uninterrupted afternoon of music, clicking on Songs is the best place to get started. This gives you access to all the music on your handset, in one place, with hours of playback on offer if you have enough tracks.

Artists does exactly what it says on the tin, giving you access to your favourite singers and bands. You can play all tracks from an individual artist or group, or click through and play an individual album. If you already have a specific album in mind though, it’s just as easy to select Albums from the menu screen and off you go.

If you prefer your music a bit more spontaneous, it’s also easy to click the Shuffle option at the top of the screen. Once a song is playing you’ll get album art and the title, and it’s easy to pull up a menu offering four different options: Favourite, Shuffle, Repeat and Share.

Playlists is a key inclusion for dedicated music fans, making it possible to organise music more effectively. Playlists is split into a number of different options: Favourites, Most Played, Recently added and Recently played.

You can also create your own custom playlists. From the playlist screen, swipe up from the bottom and you’ll see the option to ‘add new playlist.’ This brings up a list of all the songs you have on the Asha 501 – select the songs you want included and then click ‘done’ to give your playlist a name. From now on, your custom playlist will appear on the playlist screen.

Good tip: You can add whole albums to a playlist by tapping and holding the album title.

It makes picking out your favourite and most loved songs a breeze, and it also means you can access the albums you’ve bought most recently without having to search for them. Simply drag them to your Asha 501, and they’ll be included under the Recently added option automatically.

Once a song is playing, you can also click the home button without the track stopping. It appears at the top of Fastlane, so you can pause, play or open the music player again to pick another track.

These features added together make the Nokia Asha 501 a force to be reckoned with when it comes to music playback – especially when you take the outstanding battery life into account.