Not quite up for a smartphone yet? Finnish phone giant Nokia has announced that its Nokia 206 feature phone is now available for purchase in South Africa. This affordable (sub-R1 000) mobile sports a classic alphanumeric keypad, which is coupled with a 2.4" (320 x  240; 167 ppi pixel density) non-touch-enabled LCD screen. The Nokia 206 retails for around R760 and is available now in retail stores around the country.   

This pocketable (116 x 49.4 x 12.4 mm; 91 g) feature phone operates on Nokia’s Series 40 mobile platform and boasts Bluetooth 2.1, Stereo FM radio, and a removable 1110 mAh battery with an impressive claimed talk time of 20 hours. Users only have access to a paltry 64 MB worth of internal storage, but this is expandable to 32 GB via the phone’s microSD memory card slot.

A slamming new phone feature

Making its debut on the Nokia 206 is Espoo’s new Slam feature, which enables consumers to share multimedia content such as photos and videos with friends via Bluetooth. Slam works with most Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones and does not require users to pair their devices, nor does it a need the recipient of the content to also have Slam.

According to Nokia, this feature’s main benefit is that it enables users to share their content to another device faster than via Bluetooth alone and without consuming internet data.

As with Nokia’s other feature phones, the Nokia 206 employs the Nokia Xpress internet platform, which uses the company’s cloud technology to reduce data consumption by as much as 90%. This assists consumers to make the most of their data bundles whilst browsing the web.

Additionally, a web app dubbed Nokia Nearby is also onboard and helps users discover points of interest the likes of restaurants, malls and ATMs close to their location.

Other key features of the Nokia 206 include:

• Imaging technology that optimises photos taken with the 1.3 MP camera for sharing on Facebook.  
• A large variety of social and mobile entertainment including eBuddy Chat, WhatsApp and a gift pack of ten free, premium content items.
• Impressive standby time of up to 47 days.