Nokia launched 3 new devices today, and they all have one thing in common: QWERTY keyboards. Let’s start with the most expensive, the C6 (pictured above). It has a 3.2 inch screen with resolution of 640 x 360 pixels, supports quadband GSM/EDGE, and as a first for Nokia it also supports quadband HSPA! That’s right, it does HSPA on the 850/900/1900/2100 MHz bands so you’re pretty much going to get 3G anywhere in the world, unless you have a T-Mobile USA SIM. Other specifications include WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0, GPS, 3.5 mm headphone jack, 1200 mAh battery, 5 megapixel camera, all in a body that weighs 150 grams and measures 113.4 mm x 53 mm x 16.8 mm. It’s going to come out in Q2 (read: end of June) for 220 EUR ($300) before tax.
Next we have the Nokia E5. It’s slightly cheaper at 180 EUR ($245), and will ship in Q3 (read: end of September). For that amount of cash you get a 5 megapixel camera, 2.4 inch screen with a 320 x 240 resolution, GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0, S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2, quadband GSM/EDGE, and triband 10.2 Mbps HSPA. One model will do 900/1900/2100 Mhz, and another variant will do 850/1900/2100 Mhz. The whole thing weighs 126 grams, is 115 mm x 58.9 mm x 12.8 mm, and most impressive is the amount of battery life Nokia has managed to squeeze out of a 1200 mAh battery. They say this thing will get 29 days of standby time, 18 hours and 30 minutes of talk time on GSM or 5 hours and 30 minutes on 3G.
Last we have the cheapest, but most interesting device announced today, the Nokia C3. It runs S40, a dumb phone OS, but it’s also only 90 EUR ($125) when it ships this quarter. It has a 2 megapixel camera, 3.5 mm headphone jack, WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1 (unlike the other two devices announce today), and a 3.5 mm headphone jack. That’s right folks, no 3G and no GPS, but for this price point we can’t complain. The massive 1320 mAh battery promises 20 days of standby time and 7 hours of talk time. It’ll probably be able to deliver that thanks to the tiny 2.4 inch 320 x 240 pixel resolution screen, that unlike most Nokia handsets which usually show 16 million colors, runs at 262,000 colors. It weighs 114 grams and is 115.5 mm x 58.1 mm x 13.6 mm.
Now all of this is well and good, QWERTY is finally at a cheap enough price point that many people, especially the infamous teenage to 30 year old group whose addicted to SpaceBook, MyFace and Twitter, will find appealing, but these devices are entering a market filled with Samsung’s aggressive QWERTY lineup. LG too has been flooding the market with QWERTY devices. Nokia will sell a lot of these models, I’m sure of it, but had they been on the market a year earlier, then they would’ve had much less competition. It’ll be interesting to see if AT&T or T-Mobile pick up the C3 and offer it for free on contract.
It’s too tempting.