It looks like we’ll be seeing a lot of affordable Nokia phones in 2022. At CES on Wednesday, HMD Global (the company that owns Nokia) announced a number of new phones for the budget market and laid out its US sales strategy for the next two years.
The Nokia C100 4G is the company’s entry-level smartphone, coming in at just under $100. It sports a Helio A22 chipset, 4GB of RAM, and 32GB of storage.
At $119, the Nokia C200 4G has a lot in common with the C100 4G. It has the same MediaTek A22 chipset and 4GB of RAM, but you get a slightly larger display and double the storage for the extra $20.
If you’ve become accustomed to Nokia’s recent design language, the G100 4G is a notable departure. The $149 phone eschews the round camera module, replacing it with slim vertical camera stack. It features a Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 chipset along with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage.
HMD’s priciest offering, the Nokia G400 5G, makes 5G accessible at just $239. The G400 5G has the same design as the G100, but sports a beefier Qualcomm Snapdragon 480 5G chipset, 6GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage. It also has a 6.7-inch LCD with a 120Hz refresh rate.
There’s even a feature phone in the mix. The $79 Nokia 2760 Flip 4G is made with simplicity in mind. The LTE-enabled flip phone sports dual displays, a large keypad, and other features that make it an attractive choice for children and seniors.
The Nokia 2760 Flip 4G will feature the latest version of KaiOS, while the smartphones will ship with Android 12, though a Nokia representative said none of the upcoming phones will be part of the Android One program. That, along with the fact most of the handsets are being released through prepaid carriers, means there’s no guarantee for future OS upgrades and they’ll likely be loaded with a fair share of bloatware.
The company said it is pivoting to the budget market for the next two years. It will also expand its current carrier partnerships with T-Mobile and TracFone to include Consumer Cellular and Dish Wireless. In fact, it appears that nearly every Nokia phone announced for the first half of 2022 will only be available through carriers initially (as opposed to unlocked).
The Nokia 2760 Flip 4G will be a TracFone exclusive, coming in the first quarter of the year. Consumer Cellular and TracFone will begin selling the Nokia C100 4G in the first quarter as well. HMD didn’t announce any carrier partnerships for the Nokia C200 4G, but you can expect to see it in the spring.
Boost and TracFone will be the first to offer the Nokia G100 4G, while the Nokia G400 5G will be available through most prepaid carriers. Both phones will go on sale this spring.
While the company was excited to announce its new phones and sales strategy, it was short on additional details about the phones themselves. The specifications we’ve listed above are from a pre-briefing the company held with reporters in December. We’ll update this story with additional specs and details as they’re released.
