Bitter sweet symphony?
Nokia has unveiled a new budget phone designed for music-lovers called the Nokia X1-00.
It's most striking feature (apart from its orange or blue colour) is a big speaker on the back rated at 106phon, which the firm claims is ‘enough to rattle your window frames'. The frequency response has been tweaked that the sound remains undistorted at higher volumes.
It also comes with a 3.5mm audio jack, 3 dedicated music player keys and single-key playlist creator. There is space for a MicroDS card and integrated FM radio.
While this might be commonplace for smartphones, the X1-00 is set to retail for around €35, which Nokia said offers "the maximum boom-per-buck with special hardware features for users in growth markets."
This phone is targeted squarely at emerging mobile markets. Nokia said the speaker will come in handy in places where ambient noise levels are high. It also noted that "mobile music is much more likely to be a shared experience - you might be using this device as your main music player at home, for example."
There is also a dedicated torch built into the handset (again not a particularly useful feature in the West) but as Nokia points out, "pretty important if you live in a place where the power supply is unreliable or where there is no electricity at all." The standby life of the battery can also last a whopping 61 days.
The phone boasts 5 phone books as it could be shared between a family or neighbours. While €35 might not seem like a huge outlay in Western markets, Nokia noted that the handset can become accessible if the cost is divided 5 ways as the whole cost of the phone could equal a person's monthly salary in some places.
The X1-00 uses Nokia's Series 30 OS with the music player app plus a calendar, clock, pre-loaded games and calculator - it is ‘not designed to be a smartphone competitor'.
The phone should hit shops in selected markets next month and should cost around €35 before taxes and operator subsidies.
Here is an image of the X1-00.
