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Microsoft Unveils $37 Nokia 216 Feature Phone (theverge.com)
Earlier this year, Microsoft announced that it had sold Nokia's remaining feature phone business to FIH Mobile, a subsidiary of Foxconn, for $350 million. Today, Microsoft unveiled the Nokia 216 feature phone, dispelling rumors that it would stop making Nokia phones. The Verge reports: The new Nokia 216 is one of the most basic phones that Microsoft manufactures, and it will be available in India next month for around $37. It includes a 2.4-inch QVGA display, with 0.3-megapixel cameras at the front and rear, running on the Series 30 OS with the Opera mini browser. It even has a headphone jack. It's easy to understand why Microsoft continues to create feature phones, as the company still sells millions of them every month. Microsoft previously hoped that feature phone users would create a Microsoft account and become part of the Microsoft ecosystem, but it's not clear whether the millions of feature phone users ever actually did that. Microsoft hinted earlier this year that it's planning to kill off its Lumia smartphones, and recent rumors have suggested that the Lumia brand will die off toward the end of the year.
It even has a headphone jack
Really?? Hasn't this joke run its course yet?
No, Jack, it hasn't.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I am business customer with T-Mobile. Like most carriers they no longer advertise feature\flip phones on their website, but they still have them. Beginning soon and through Easter or so, I will be needing a single phone for CS calls. I need voice and voice only and only for a few hours a day. Sure, I could resurrect a no longer used smartphone or BlackBerry, but why pay for a full plan when I need just a few hours of voice a day? This type of phone is just what I need and the dirt cheap plan is just what I need.
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I had a Windows phone and the OS was head and shoulders above its mobile OS competitors. Intuitive and fast interface, and amazing performance for the hardware. Unfortunately there was an astonishing lack of apps, so I had to switch back to android. It was kind of 1995 in reverse: I gave up a better Windows-based OS for an inferior Linux-based one because the Linux-based one had better commercial software support.
Am I the only person who's starting to lose track of who owns the rights to what after Nokia sold off its phone business to Microsoft?
I was under the impression that the right to use the "Nokia" name (which MS got the right to after buying the phone division) was due to expire after some time (#) and that was why MS were phasing it out.
The previous story linked in the summary seems to imply that MS sold off the ex-Nokia feature phone business to FIH, but they're still apparently making feature phones as "new Nokia phones" [my emphasis]
Yet Nokia itself announced it was licensing its name to a (different) manufactuer- HMD Global for similar purposes.
So what's going on? Does MS still own the name- or have a license to it- for smartphone and tablet use. Or has Nokia got it back? I can't see either party signing an agreement that would let them both use it for competing products in the same field (i.e. phones and tablets) at the same time; that sounds unworkable.
(#) This seems to be fairly typical when another company Y buys out X's widget division; they get the right to use X's name for a while (and presumably a non-compete from X, not that X is usually concerned with re-entering the field they've just left). I assume (for example) this is why the "Samsung" M3 external USB hard drives have been rebranded as "Maxtor" but remained otherwise identical- Seagate (who have long owned the Maxtor brand) bought out Samsung's HDD business a while back.
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And a headphone jack for listening to FM Radio - take that iPhone 7!
I use a Nokia 130 Dual SIM for work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
* microUSB charging port, which is great. Not many feature phones have that.
* lasts for 1-2 weeks
* cheap but reasonably solid construction
* fluid UI
* only about $30
8/10, would recommend.