Nokia Asha 205 and Nokia 206 say hello on a dime

Nokia announced a duo of brightly colored phones Monday - the socially minded Nokia Asha 205 and the Nokia 206 feature phone. Both phones have dual-SIM variants which give users side access to a SIM card slot, allowing them to easily swap out cards without turning off the phone.  The feature allows users to have a work and private number on the same phone, among other applications.  The only difference is the dual-SIM versions have a little less battery life.

The Asha 205 is a phone for those digital social butterflies. It comes with a physical QWERTY keyboard to help compose tweets and has a dedicated Facebook button.  Its pre-installed with social services such as Facebook (obviously), Twitter and eBuddy. A gift pack of 40 EA games is also available for download.

The Asha 205 weighs in at 94 grams with a 2.4-inch 65K color QVGA TFT screen and has 113 x 61 x 13 millimeter dimensions. It also packs a VGA camera. Connectivity wise, it has GSM 850/900/1800/1900 frequencies and Bluetooth v2.1.  The phone has about 10MB of internal storage but supports up to a 32GB micro-SD card. Nokia also said the battery lasts through 11 hours of talk time and 37 days on standby.  Though the phone doesn't have GPS, it does connect to cell towers and serves up a local map with points of interest. It won't tell users where they are, but it will show what's around them.

Nokia branded the 206 as a boldly reimagined feature phone, which means it has some of the features of a smartphone at a better price.

"The Nokia 206 comes in cyan, black, white, magenta and yellow, and boasts a sleek curved form with a distinctive modern look," a Nokia press release read. It has a 2.4-inch 65k color 320 x 240 QVGA TFT display. With dimensions of 116 x 49.4 x 12.4 millimeters, it weighs 91 grams. The 206 boasts a 1.3MP camera and can capture video. The phone automatically resizes picture files to 700KB to make it easier to upload to the web. It connects to less of the wireless spectrum at GSM 850/1900, but also has Bluethooth. Nokia also said the phone will have a pretty diehard battery. It has 20 hours of talk-time with 47 days of standby life.

The two also come with Nokia's new "Slam" sharing technology. The share tech lets users send photos and other data to other Bluetooth devices without paring them.  A users could take a picture and choose to Slam it. The phone would then connect to the nearest Bluetooth device and offer up a file. The other device doesn't have to be a Nokia phone or have Slam installed to get the file.

There's also the Nokia Xpress Browser preinstalled on both phones. The internet app uses cloud-based servers to reduce the data volume of websites sent to the phones by about 90 percent. The data conservation will help save a bit on the data usage when the monthly bill comes around.

That is most of the new exciting stuff coming out from Nokia. The Nokia Asha 205 and the Nokia 206 both come out Q4 of 2012, so they should hit the streets soon.

They will both cost around $62, though there's no word on international availability or pricing.

VIA: Techradar

Source: Nokia