HMD Global Oy, the Finnish manufacturer with exclusive rights to market phones under the storied Nokia brand, is planning to announce four such handsets at Mobile World Congress later this month, according to a person briefed on the company’s plans.
Besides the already revealed Nokia 6 — launched in China but not yet elsewhere — HMD is poised to unveil another pair of downmarket Android 7.0 Nougat-powered devices, the Nokia 5 and Nokia 3. So whereas the 6 features a full HD, 5.5-inch display, Snapdragon 430 system-on-chip, 4GB of RAM, and 16-megapixel primary camera, the other two will ratchet down the specs to hit lower price points.
The Nokia 5, for instance, is rumoured to maintain its larger sibling’s chipset, but reduce the display to 5.2 inches at 720p, halve the RAM to 2GB, and decrease the main image sensor to 12 megapixels. That will translate into a R700 (€50) difference between the two models, with Nokia 6 retailing for R3490 (€249) and Nokia 5 for R2790 (€199), according to the briefed individual. (One euro [€] = 14 South African Rands [ZAR]. )
Nokia 3, the entry-level Android, will initially go for R2090 (€149).
But perhaps the most interesting of these devices, at least from the perspective of mobile enthusiasts, is not a smartphone at all, but a modern version of a classic workhorse of a feature phone, the Nokia 3310. Known primarily for its plentiful battery life and nearly indestructible build, the 3310 was released at the turn of the millennium as a replacement to the also-popular 3210.
At just R830 (€59), this new incarnation seems priced competitively enough to win over nostalgic former owners for use as a second phone.
HMD is holding its launch event on February 26 in Barcelona. It’s explicitly targeting the European marketplace, while distribution plans for other regions — namely North America — weren’t immediately known.
Source: venturebeat.com
