Think of the difference between a namebrand and a white label.
If you get a bland cheap Chinese android phone, everyone will know it and you'll lose face. An Asha is a bit more classier, well designed, higher quality, still very affordable.
Without a careful inspection, most people will have a very difficult time telling it apart from newer Samsung phones, and it runs far, far better than the terrible Symbian OS.
Ah, I've seen that phone for real (my office is in Zhongguancun). Its a piece of crap; all the Shanzhai phones are actually. In Chinese they have a saying: 便宜没好货，好货不便宜, you get what you pay for.
What if I wanted to buy something for 7-800 kuai that wasn't a knockoff or a cheap piece of crap? The Asha promises "less" in terms of specs so it can offer more in other areas. Reasonable trade off.
If by "without careful inspection" you mean "looking at the phone when it's turned off". That device is compromised beyond belief. For example it's got 256MB of memory while running Android 4.0. That amount of memory was appropriate for low-res phones running 1.5. Devices with double the RAM became close to unusable with 4.0.
Ryan, there's some truth in your assertions BUT this is not ONLY Symbian. It's MeeGo + Symbian on the core + Smarterphone that Nokia has acquired = new Asha platform software.
If you get a bland cheap Chinese android phone, everyone will know it and you'll lose face. An Asha is a bit more classier, well designed, higher quality, still very affordable.