The new Finnish owner of the Nokia brand appears to be committed to rebuilding its image, particularly is markets like India where it held sway for a considerable period.
There are many customers in India who may be using smartphones, but do carry a spare feature phone also in addition. The main reason behind this is the battery life. Once the smartphones have exhausted the life in the battery, the feature phone tucked away in some inner pocket or a backpack zip will be taken out and urgent voice calls made.
Perhaps that is one reason why HMD Global has just launched two more feature phones, the Nokia 105 and the Nokia 130 in the Indian market, with sales of the Nokia 105 starting on July 19. The other phone will follow soon.
The display in both the phones is an identical 1.8-inch color screen and the phones are being released in three different colors. In the case of the Nokia 105, these are black, white and blue, whereas for the Nokia 130, the colors are black, grey and red. The phones will run on Nokia Series 30+ OS. The display type is QVGA.
The 800 mAh battery on the Nokia 105 is capable of delivering 15 hours of talk time and even a month’s standby period. The battery on the Nokia 130 is a bit larger 1020 mAh. The phones have been given a huge boost with 4GB RAM and 4GB ROM. A flashlight and FM radio are also added features.
The Nokia 105 is being released in two variants, a single SIM and a dual SIM one. Similarly, the Nokia 130 will also be made available in single and dual SIM variants.
The physical key buttons have been designed to make it convenient for the users while keying in letters or numbers and keeping the display at 1.8 inches gives a larger viewing panel than conventional feature phones.
The higher ranked Nokia 130 will feature a Bluetooth connectivity provision and the user can playback videos on it for over 10 hours without having to worry about recharging the phone.
The two variants of the Nokia 105 are being offered in the Indian market at Rs 999 and Rs 1, 129 for the single and dual sim models respectively. The prices for the two variants of the Nokia 130 are yet to be revealed, though internationally it is being sold at an equivalent of Rs 1, 500.
According to HMD Global, four billion feature phones were shipped across the world so people are still using feature phones and the company would like to cater to this segment for as long as it can.