Mobile World Congress 2013 is sure to be full of smartphone tech and announcements, but Nokia has kicked off the conference by announcing two new handsets for the budget end of the market.
The first is the Nokia 105, which is noteworthy because it will only cost around $20 and boasts a battery life of 35 days. Such a cheap and battery-friendly phone is obviously going to be light on features, but then this isn’t a handset attempting to compete with the latest smartphones.
The 105 has a 1.4-inch 128 x 128 resolution display, measures 107 x 44.8 x 14.3mm, and weighs just 70 grams. It doesn’t have a camera, storage is limited to 8MB, and RAM is a mere 384KB. But you do get 35 days of standby time out of an 800mAh battery, 12.5 hours talk time, and a flashlight. If all you want is a phone for talking and no worries about maximizing your battery life, this is probably as good as it gets.
A little higher up the scale Nokia has introduced the Nokia 301. Costing around $85, it offers a 2.4-inch 320 x 240 resolution display, measures 114 x 50 x 12.5mm, and weighs 100.5 grams. Battery life is even more impressive than the 105, managing 37 days standby time and 20 hours talk time using a 1200mAh battery. You also get a 3.2MP camera producing 2048 x 1536 images.
Even though the display is relatively tiny you still get access to the web through Nokia’s Xpress Browser, which compresses data up to 90 percent to save on bandwidth.