Microsoft Unveils INSANELY Cheap Phone: The Nokia 215

Microsoft has revealed a $30 feature phone with the Nokia 215

Microsoft may have dropped the Nokia branding for its Lumia Windows Phone range but apparently this doesn’t extend to its devices based on other software, as the company has just announced the Nokia 215 feature phone.

There’s more than a hint of retro feel here similar to Nokia’s old feature phones from the nineties, complete with a physical dialpad and navigation keys - there’s no touchscreen action to be found, although by the looks of things we get a more vibrant display panel and some updated software design. Microsoft is still determined to boost our number of required trips to the opticians though with a particularly eye-popping green colour variant alongside regular white and black options.

There will be both single-SIM and dual-SIM variants and the handset will go on sale in Europe, African, the Middle East and Asia - Microsoft has quoted an off-contract, SIM-free retail price of only $30 US (before taxes) so we’d expect it to be about £30 in the UK.

Pre-installed software includes the Opera Mini web browser, Facebook and Facebook Messenger, Twitter, Bing Search (of course) and MSN Weather. In terms of connectivity the handset supports 2G for mobile data and Bluetooth 3.0. You also get microSD support for cards up to 32GB, MP3 playback, and a built-in FM radio. Microsoft is promising big battery life, which you’d hope for on a feature phone with fewer bells and whistles; allegedly the 1,100mAh cell will last for 29 days on standby, alternatively you can get 20 hours of talk-time or around 50 hours of music.

The display isn’t going to wow Samsung Galaxy Note 4 users anytime soon but the 2.4in QVGA does looks reasonably bright and colourful, it has a 240x320 pixel resolution but at this size the sharpness shouldn’t be too shabby. Naturally you also can’t expect high-end camera capabilities at this price point so what we have here is a 0.3MP setup with QVGA video recording at 15fps.