As Nokia gears up its inevitable reentry in the smartphone business, new pricing details about its first line of smartphones have been leaked, suggesting that Nokia's return is to be spearheaded by mid-range budget handsets.
Pricing Of First Nokia Phones In 2017
For the uninitiated, HMD Global will take charge of the manufacturing front. The company was formed specifically to revitalize Nokia's abysmal smartphone business, having already promised to pump $500 million in global marketing over the next three years in Nokia's favor.
In a recent interview with the Economic Times in India, HMD Global's management team has assured that the brand will cater not just to top-of-the-line smartphone tiers, but will also introduce mid-range offerings with competitive price points.
"[W]e are going to have wide range of price points," said Arto Nummela, CEO of HMD Global. "Nokia is known everywhere and it is everyone's brand, it does not exclude any consumer segment, there's no elitist stamp on the brand which means that for us, from a portfolio perspective, it is possible for us in a reliable way to offer an extremely wide portfolio."
Nummela's statements line up congruously with a recent report that the first Nokia phone, the D1C will have an unveiling at the Mobile World Congress this February, with $200 and $150 variants.
Nokia D1C Leaked Specs
As reported by NokiaPowerUser, the $200 Nokia D1C smartphone will have a 5.5-inch Full HD display and have 3 GB of RAM onboard. On the back of the device is a 16-megapixel rear shooter and on the front is an 8-megapixel shooter. The $150 D1C variant, on the other hand, sports a smaller screen at 5 inches, 2 GB of RAM, and a 13-megapixel rear shooter.
Both variants will reportedly be powered with a 1.4 GHz Snapdragon 430 Processor and an Adreno 505 GPU for graphics. Surprisingly, both phones will load Android 7.0 Nougat out-of-the-box and will have 16 GB of internal storage.
Leaked product renders of the D1C circulated online in early November, suggesting that the forthcoming smartphone will be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 processor, lining up neatly with the recent report. The D1C also visited Geekbench this past October, adding weight to the phone's rumors already mentioned, particularly the processor and Nougat.
The last Lumia-branded phone consumers have seen in the market was the Microsoft Lumia 650, a by-product of Microsoft's Nokia purchase, released in February this year. Nokia has since pumped out budget non-smartphones instead, donning its signature alphanumeric keypad. The most recent Nokia phone is the Nokia 216, released in October this year, so its forthcoming mid-range Android offerings should be a breath of fresh air, especially if the rumored price points turn out to be true.
Are you excited about Nokia's reentry in the smartphone business? Feel free to sound off in the comments section below!
