Yesterday Nokia announced Belle, their forthcoming update to Symbian, along with the first three devices that will (hopefully) be shipping by the end of this quarter with Belle onboard. The cheapest of those three devices, the Nokia 600, comes in at around $260 before taxes and subsidies. Today Nokia announced two new devices, the 100 and 101, that are on the complete opposite side of the spectrum. They’ll cost just $30 and $35 respectively, making them the cheapest devices the Finnish handset maker has ever launched. From the outside they both look the same, but the 101 is special because it’s a dual SIM product. We’ve reached out to Nokia to find out if the two SIM cards are active at the same time or whether manual switching is required. Update: The Nokia 101 is a “Dual-SIM Dual Standby” device, meaning both SIM cards are on at the same time. Speaking about software, these devices run Series 30, Nokia’s lowest end operating system, meaning no applications for you! You wouldn’t want to run apps on the small 1.8 inch screen anyway. Both devices have a flashlight, FM radio, and the 101 even has a microSD card slot and MP3 player. Expect the 100 and 101 to hit the market by the end of September.
Hardware like this is what Nokia is known for and it’s good to see that despite their dwindling marketshare, mindshare, and increased competition from no name Chinese handset vendors, Nokia is still pushing on and committing to their corporate slogan of “Connecting People”. It’s this feature phone division that contributes a significant portion of Nokia’s revenues that has kept them from being an acquisition target. No one really wants to take over the logistical nightmare that Nokia deals with on a daily basis just to be able to service the emerging economies.
Now the important question, what do you think of these two phones? Don’t you kind of wish we’d go back to those simpler times of talking/texting and month long battery life?