If you haven’t been paying attention, HMD Global (Human Mobile Devices) owns Nokia now. This isn’t news — it’s been that way for the better part of seven years — but with the company’s recent upswing in activity, we thought a reminder was in order. In fact, it’s gearing up to launch its own smartphone brand, but before it gets there, it’s got three new Nokia ‘dumbphones’ to share. Meet the Nokia 6310, Nokia 5310, and Nokia 230.
You might have thought the ‘dumbphone’ was dead and buried, but you couldn’t be more wrong. Just the other day we spent time reviewing Nokia’s 2660 Flip — a phone that deals in megabytes rather than gigabytes when it comes to RAM. And that 0.3MP camera? Lovely.
Music to our ears
It’s worth mentioning that these aren’t exactly ‘new’. They’re rehashed classic Nokia devices. The Nokia 6310 (2024) for instance, is riding the coattails of the model from 2021 (which itself is derived from the original Nokia 6310 from 2001), though Nokia’s thrown in a larger 1,450mAh battery and a USB-C port. See, Apple? It’s not that hard.
Everything else… has been kept the same. It still sports a 2.8in QVGA display, 8MB of internal storage, dual SIM-slot, and a 0.3MP camera on the rear end we saw during the re-release in 2021. There’s even a 3.5mm audio jack — something plenty of today’s smartphones can’t brag about.
Nokia’s 5310 (2024) is yet another refresh, being the third iteration in the 5310 family. Modelled after the 2020 refresh, the 5310 first came to power in 2007 as an “XpressMusic” phone. Don’t worry. We had to look it up too. As for the specs of the 2024 model, it packs a larger 1,450mAh battery, a larger 2.8in QVGA display, and a Unisoc 6531F chipset. Oh, and the USB-C charging hole is also new. Everything else…
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And finally, we have the Nokia 230 (2024). Being the youngest of the bunch, having only released in 2015, it was only entitled to the bare necessities to turn this into a usable phone for 2024. That means the same 1,450 mAh battery upgrade and USB-C port on the bottom. It’s got Bluetooth 5.0 too thanks to the Unisoc 6531F CPU. The 2MP camera, 8/16MB of RAM and storage, and 2.8in QVGA display remain untouched.
At the time of writing, Nokia is yet to officially announce prices, nor a strategy to launch these locally in SA. We’re not worried about that last bit — Nokia’s a fan of South Africa and always has been. No, what concerns us most is that these devices are 2G capable and only 2G capable — which is reportedly getting the boot come 2027. Whether that’ll actually happen is a different story altogether.